Summary
West Java would not try an instant pasta, because pasta is somebody else’s food. So LaFonte Pronto stopped being pasta and became Persib: the players on the pack, the club’s blessing on the box, and a collectible inside worth sticking on your helmet.
Year
2019
Role
Strategic Planner / Creative Director
Discipline
Brand Partnership
Services
Campaign Strategy / Brand Partnership / Sampling Activation
Case study film
Brand’s challenge
The brief asked for trial: get potential consumers in West Java to try LaFonte Pronto. The barrier was the mental drawer. Pasta sits in the “foreign food” drawer for most of West Java: Italian, restaurant-shaped, not mine. No amount of taste talk moves a product out of that drawer, because the objection was never taste. It was belonging. And West Java already has an object of total belonging: Persib. The fanbase is famously die-hard, and the deck said the quiet part plainly: they will buy anything with Persib’s logo on it. Not because they are gullible. Because buying it is an act of support.
The idea
Do not sell Italian pasta to Bandung. Sell Persib. Special-edition packs put the squad itself on the box: I Made Wirawan, Atep, Kim Kurniawan, each player fronting a variant, with the club’s official blessing printed on the corner. The pack stopped asking “would you like to try pasta?” and started asking a question no Bobotoh refuses: “are you with the club?”
Campaign Strategy / Brand Partnership / Sampling Activation
The execution
01
An official alliance, not a logo rental
Mitra Resmi Persib Bandung on every pack. In a fan culture that polices authenticity, the difference between licensed and stuck-on is the difference between real gear and a counterfeit.
03
Tempel di Helm
The collectible inside is made to leave the kitchen: player cards fans stick on their helmets. Bandung runs on motorbikes, so the pack’s second life is riding around the city as visible support.
02
The players on the packs
Each variant carries a player’s face and name. The shelf became a squad line-up, and choosing a flavour became choosing your player.
04
The launch film with the squad
The players themselves introduced the packs, so the trial ask arrived from the dressing room, not from a pasta brand.
The impact
From foreign shelf to fan gear
The special edition moved LaFonte Pronto across the one border taste advertising cannot cross: from somebody else’s food to my club’s pack. Trying the product became an act of support, and the pack’s afterlife on helmets kept the campaign visible on every street the fanbase rides.