
The Digital Marketing Strategy of Nescafé
As one of the most embraced brands across the world, Nescafé has a notable digital marketing strategy.
Adopting a character that is part of life globally, Nescafé digital marketing strategy is a good example of how to communicate with a wide target audience. The brand manages to represent itself as a supporter of different life situations, regardless of the income, age, gender or more.
Announcing the world-famous instant coffee in 1938, Nescafé started a long journey that accompanies historical events. As a result of good campaigns and projects, the brand now reaches out in over 180 countries and is considered to become the world’s favorite coffee. Another globally successful brand is Coca-Cola – no doubt. We have a lot to learn from the digital marketing strategy of Coca-Cola and Nescafé.
When we do a detailed search to see the best Nescafé digital marketing strategy and Nescafé social media strategy, we recognise the similarities between various projects. As an old brand, it seems to find out how to stay young and active in order to attract new generations.
Considering the older consumers are already familiar with the brand, digging the digital tunnels across platforms is a good idea to reach out younger consumers. We have a lot to learn from this old-but-gold brand for the sake of success in digital.
So, let’s deep dive into the digital marketing success of Nescafé and analyze the unique strategies of the brand.
Connecting the digital with the physical world
Nescafé came out with a challenge: are you really friends with your Facebook connections?
In a world, getting digital at a crazy pace, friendships are also having a different vibe. From this idea, the company decided to turn online friendships to offline ones to see what’s going on with friends in the digital era.
The main character of the project of “Really Friends?” was Arnaud who is around 35 year old and has more than 1000 friends on Facebook. He visited his Facebook friends to have an offline conversation, with an iconic Nescafé cup in his hand.
Arnold made a 42-web video documentary along with the interactions with his friends. The documentary had more than 8 million views, 63,000 likes, 5,500 shares and 4,800 comments on Facebook. That’s not all! The brand’s Facebook Page also increased the number of fans by 400%.
The project turned into a real success as other people also wanted to have the same experience as Arnaud, which gave the idea of a contest. The Facebook contest, titled ’le Défi Nescafé, got 26,000 applications.
The brand is always active through many online and offline campaigns and it is a great idea to combine both.
Mobile-first / Social-first approach
Nescafé is a love brand with a lot of followers on social media.
This is not a coincidence, but a result of the brand’s mobile-first approach. The purpose of this upgraded perspective is to re-energise the brand according to Carsten Fredholm, head of Nestlé’s beverage strategic business unit. Also, a global focus on mobile and social media help them create a consistent look and feel across in 180 countries.
Nescafé has 35M followers on Facebook and 90.1K followers on Instagram(They have local Instagram accounts for different countries). Considering Millennials create a big part of their target audience, that is a great way to keep in touch with them. The brand is also active on the platforms such as Twitter, Snapchat.

Being always in connection with the new generation makes them stay young despite all the years in the sector. The brand is trying hard to keep the leadership in its class through such energiser projects and never letting people see the brand as an outdated one.
Conducting global campaigns for global identity
Another digital success of Nescafé is “Good Morning World”, which is a 360-degree video campaign on Facebook. The target is basically ‘to create real connections’ with the younger generation. The campaign, created as a part of REDvolution identity of the brand, is aiming to create a global character for Nescafé.
Global brands may choose different approaches for marketing such as playing the game more local. With this campaign, like many others, Nescafé chose to act globally by celebrating the variety in a single project.
As of the campaign, people from all around the world are seen at their breakfast tables – with a cup of Nescafé. They dance with and chant the soundtrack of “Don’t Worry” by Madcon. The audience has an interactive experience with the 360-degree video. They can point their smartphones in any direction to view different clips within the video.
Here we have to realize that Nescafé’s digital marketing strategy meticulously focuses on the younger consumers. And obviously, that strategy works very well.