Coffee-Mate turns Filipino 'lambing' into a microdrama-led streaming campaign

Coffee-Mate has turned a Filipino expression of care and affection into the centrepiece of a streaming-first campaign, using microdrama to bring its latest brand story closer to audiences.

The Nestlé coffee creamer brand worked with WPP Media, Magnite and Viu on the campaign, built around Lambing Serye, a romantic workplace short film that positions Coffee-Mate as an everyday expression of ‘lambing’ – a Filipino way of showing care and affection.

Rather than treating the short film as a standalone piece of branded content, the campaign extended its storytelling across connected TV (CTV), over-the-top (OTT) and Viu’s microdrama environment.

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The approach came as Coffee-Mate sought to rebuild its relevance among consumers amid a changing coffee ritual. The category had experienced four consecutive years of decline, with more consumers switching to black coffee.

Against this backdrop, the brand identified microdrama as an opportunity to reconnect with audiences through a storytelling format already gaining traction among mobile-first consumers.

The campaign adapted Lambing Serye into purpose-built 15- and 30-second vertical creatives for Viu’s mobile-first microdrama environment. The format was designed to match the pacing and emotional style of short-form episodic storytelling, rather than simply repurposing the campaign’s horizontal video assets.

On CTV and OTT, the campaign retained the cinematic treatment of the original story, while the vertical executions were designed to blend more naturally into Viu’s episodic viewing experience.

Magnite powered the programmatic activation across premium streaming environments, allowing Coffee-Mate to combine audience, geographic and behavioural targeting across CTV and OTT with Viu’s mobile-first microdrama placement.

The audience strategy focused on adults aged 18 to 54, particularly urban professionals balancing work, family and social lives, with targeting signals spanning coffee, dairy, sweets and tea purchase intent as well as media behaviours such as frequent short-form video consumption.

The campaign also marked the first activation of Viu Philippines’ new premium microdrama advertising placement programmatically, extending Coffee-Mate’s storytelling into an emerging entertainment format.

“To make Coffee-Mate relevant again, we needed a story people would choose to watch, not skip. Microdrama was the right format. Our audience already loved the storytelling style, and Lambing Serye was built for it. WPP Media, Magnite, and Viu’s partnership built innovative streaming solutions that brought Lambing Serye in front of the right consumers at the right moment,” said Luis Miguel Ugarte Cacho, brand manager, Coffee-Mate.

The campaign delivered a 94% video completion rate for its microdrama ads, 36% above Viu’s OTT benchmark, alongside more than four million impressions and completed views across Central Luzon, Calabarzon and Central Visayas.

It also recorded an 11-point increase in brand awareness, while Coffee-Mate reported 97% brand consideration and 93% high brand favourability. On the business side, the brand returned to positive year-to-date growth after four years of category decline, reached a 72% market share peak and saw a 20% increase in consumers adding creamer back to black coffee.

From AI-powered marketing and the friction economy to retention-led growth, DMA Philippines 2026 on 29 September in Manila will bring together marketers to tackle the opportunities and challenges shaping the next phase of digital transformation.

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