Millions of votes cast in Fonterra's nest cream cake competition
A cake named “Mango Banquet” has taken out the title of Best Cream Cake in a competition in China that captivated online audiences, with more than 10 million votes being cast.
The second Anchor Food Professionals’ annual Best Cream Cake competition invited consumers across China to vote for their favourite cake designed by bakeries that Fonterra sells its Anchor Food Professionals range to there.
The runner-up – ‘Chocolate Cream Brulee’ created by Secret Recipe.
The contest was launched in 2015 as a means of introducing people to the innovative cake products that Fonterra’s customers sell. In 2016’s competition, 346 bakery chains and 7,532 stores took part.
Only in its second year, the Best Cream Cake competition has already emerged as a major annual event on the bakery industry calendar in China, said Richard Allen, Vice President of Anchor Food Professionals China.
“This event has become iconic and few of our bakery customers want to miss out on the opportunity to showcase their creations,” said Mr Allen. “No one has tried running an initiative like this in the past, so it is a good example of our ability to innovate in a largely fragmented industry.
“The bakeries that use our Anchor Food Professionals’ natural dairy products go to great lengths to produce unique, creative and delicious goods and this competition helps recognise that work and bring in new shoppers.”
The competition ran for 15 days, finishing in December. The winning cake – titled ‘’Mango Banquet’ – was created by the South China-based ViewSunZizi bakery, receiving more than 620,000 votes. Second place was awarded to East China’s Secret Recipe chain for its ‘Chocolate Cream Brulee’, which received more than 476,000 votes.
As well as generating a total of nearly 10.2 million votes, Fonterra’s customers reported more than 125,000 direct sales worth an estimated value of RMB 22 million (NZD $4.53 million).
The campaign was run primarily through Dianping, a food app commonly referred to as China’s equivalent of Yelp, with more than 200 million monthly active users nationwide. Of the 124 marketing campaigns running on the platform in November, Fonterra’s initiative was the best performing campaign, attracting the most page views and the highest levels of participation.