Case Study / Commercial / Video

Shan Foods

The Creative Concept

Shan’s panel research showed that their brand awareness is lower among the Indian diaspora compared to their strong positioning with Pakistani audiences. Indians are a key target audience for Shan and as a result this focus made up a large part of their 2024 strategy; increasing awareness and driving conversions among their Indian audience.
As such, Shan Foods needed a campaign which connected their brand to the holiday of Diwali (celebrated by many Indians globally) and enforce their core brand ideals: “Different yet together” and “World Divides, Food Unites.” It was up to our team to increase awareness and build consideration amongst their target audience, in order to resonate these ideals and solidify Shan as the go-to spice-mix brand.

The 360-degree campaign covered the following aspects:
• Creating the full concept and design for the campaign 
• Developing a paid promotion plan for each social media platform (Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok) 
• Implementing content to increase awareness  
• Buying relevant media
• Developing bespoke AI-powered social media content
• Guiding on embedded tags for tracking and monitoring  
• Monitoring performance  
• Developing a robust evaluation report 

We centred our creative idea around the word Roshan, meaning ‘to light’ or ‘light up’ in Hindi. This play on wording, cleverly aligned the concept with the branding “RoSHAN” and Diwali – the festival of light. This idea allowed us to create multiple executions of the key visual, each one featured a different face holding a bowl or plate of delicious Shan Food that lit up their faces.
Unity is an integral pillar to both Diwali and Shan Foods, therefore it was important for us to bring this to the forefront in the concepting stage. By incorporating many different demographics in our treatment, we were able to celebrate diversity and appeal to not only the primary audience but also a variety secondary audiences too.

Production

The project was very ambitious, with a four-week turnaround period from pre to post, whilst working with the client based in a different time zone. Culturally, we had to ensure that we understood Diwali, the food, dress and decor, portraying this authentically to Indian’s living in the UK.  
Our diverse cast captured Shan’s brand identity of inclusivity and diversity as we moved through a variety of households celebrating Diwali. To ensure authenticity and chemistry, we shot with a real mother and daughter for the opening scene alongside real siblings for the second family scene. This proved especially effective at producing a genuine connection on screen and allowed the and warmth around the dinner table to radiate.

The use of light on set was at the heart of this production, to emulate the festival. All scenes had to be carefully thought out and utilize creative techniques to ensure the light was emanating from the food and dishes. This meant a lot of prep work before filming could commence, as the crew had to ensure location spaces were blacked out and lighting was re-created in the desired position. 
Skilled script and storytelling ensured our overarching narrative could be broken down into individual stories.  This allowed for targeted marketing across Meta and other social platforms as we were able to promote a particular scene (with its own unique demographic and household set up) to audience members of that same demographic. This was vital in increasing engagement with targeted audience demographics. 
The longer edit worked well across TV, YouTube and the Shan Foods website and was especially effective at adding depth and detail to the narrative, perfectly illustrating how Shan appeals to a wide spectrum of society.

Who we were targeting

Shan Foods had asked us to target South Asian people aged 20-45 living in the United Kingdom. We conducted thorough research at our London agency to analyse the best way to inform them of the brand on various platforms and channels. During our findings, we also identified Germany as a key region to target. This information ensured we could maximize exposure to people who celebrated Diwali.
We were targeting a modern and educated audience. We wanted to make a difference, but we need to maintain perspective and balance without letting the well-meaning aspect overshadow our message.
How our target audience consumes social media was at the forefront of our content strategy and allowed us to tailor each key channel to the consumption habits of each cohort. This involved utilizing specific audio and trends which would already be predisposed to engagement from our target audience, as it’s similar to what they consume in their free time.

So, did it work?

The campaign had over 18 million impressions across TikTok, Meta and Display, reaching over 3.8 million people. With an awareness objective, the campaign achieved a high reach with an estimated 97.3% of the target audience reached (by probable calculation) with high on-ad engagement. This included 4,018,589 views on Tik Tok in the UK alone with a high 71.4% 15-second view rate, which was well above the benchmark. 
Regarding video engagement on Meta platforms, the campaign experienced a ThruPlay rate of 21.5% (more than double the benchmark) and a very good post engagement rate of 14.3%, well above the benchmark of 1-5%. The campaign across Meta saw a total of 610,115 views. 
The team at Shan were thrilled to have received a campaign which outperformed their targets and acted as a testament to the Shan brand and its values. Sania Khursheed, Assistant Brand Manager at Shan, stated “Collaborating with the talented team at Synima was an absolute privilege. Your dedication and expertise turned this vision into reality, ensuring this campaign shines as brightly as Diwali itself.”

“Your dedication and expertise turned this vision into reality, ensuring this campaign shines as brightly as Diwali itself.”