Polar Ice Case Study

Case Study: How Polar Ice Vodka Echoed through Social Media to Reach Fun Seekers Feb 25 / 2010

What we’ll cover today
Introduction
Background on Polar Ice Vodka
Our digital task
Finding & creating the right digital mix
Results
What’s next

About Me
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Phil Barrett (.mobi)
VP Digital & Mobile
CMA Digital Council
Mobile Evangelist
360 Marketer
BSTREET Communications
Toronto & London, UK ‏

Speaks to your most valuable consumers
Travels across all marketing disciplines
Optimizes your marketing spend
Drives equity, sales and market share
SmartIdeas TM BSTREET is a marketing communications agency dedicated to creating for your brand.

About Polar Ice Vodka
Like the live music scene in the East, the cosmopolitan cocktail scene in the West, and the “gotta be seen” dance clubs in our downtown cores, Polar Ice® is a true contemporary Canadian vodka.
Quadruple distilled and triple filtered for a legendary clean, smooth taste, Polar Ice® is the largest selling Canadian vodka brand
Bronze Medal Winner - the Beverage Testing Institute 2008
Double Gold Medal Winner - the San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2003

Background
BSTREET hired to redevelop visual identity system for the brand in 2008
Targeting 19-25 “funseekers”
Vis had to live across retail, trade, print and online
No existing website or online presence

Our Digital Task
Establish online consumer position as a brand site / bring to life the PIV identity system that can also support ongoing promotions
Extend online experience to other social media tools in order to engage fun seekers
Incorporate unique position as Canadian vodka with specific content to differentiate from other vodka sites
Create an experience that will create word of mouth (WOM) buzz

Finding the right Digital Mix

BSTREET Media Mix Philosophy (from last year)

Twitter – Content Plan
Weekly content schedule that focused on lifestyle not just product
Content was pre-loaded weeks in advanced & auto-published using free twitter tools
#musicmonday
#martinimonday
#filmreviewfriday
#WhatEverHappenedTo
Featured drink recipes
Misc quotes, questions, and statements that resonate with the fu seeker

Extending to facebook
Launched facebook fan page at the same time as the PIV website (as opposed to creating a group or Application)
Site became extension of website & incorporated many of the same design elements
Strong call to action back to the website
Product & recipe content also lives on the fan page
Overall – the facebook experience needs to be relevant, timely, and aligned with other channels

Other Vodkas on Facebook
637 fans
2,952 fans
897 fans

Social Media Summary
Both channels are proving to be effective in reaching our target demographic in the channel of their choice
WOM is helping with acceleration of fans
Small investment in social ads resulted in huge exposure for brand on facebook

Website
Our assignment? Create a brand site that goes beyond what the category has done traditionally by integrating social media extensions into the website experience

Our Inspiration

Lessons learned from Skittles
Over 2000% increase in traffic in one week
Massive social media buzz & word of mouth – although much of it was not positive
Although bold & successful in many ways, they lost ALL control of the brand
They didn’t really engage / join the conversation… so didn’t follow the true spirit of social media

More Inspiration

The Smart Idea: Syndication vs Stickiness
Go beyond a traditional “flash” only brand / promotional website
Create an EXPERIENCE that will interest fun seekers and…
Engage them in ways they are already familiar with in social media
Overall – create content and experience that will syndicate across multiple channels

Make the PIV Experience Social
The socialscape created for the PIV website will “echo” tweets from the twitterverse
Pre-filtered / formatted tweets with common words (brand attributes, fun seeker attributes) will appear to echo from the landscape and in real-time
User can input their own words
Link to PIV twitter page
This allows us to leverage user generated content and social media while maintaining control of the brand
Content can be seeded
Content can come from a specific event to correspond with on trade activities
Users can enter their own words to change stream

Other features
User can change / choose from ~5 different socialscapes that are specific to regions of Canada
Fun seeker can change the music loop that starts playing when they land on the website
Incorporated sharing widgets & easy links to facebook and twitter channels

LIVE DEMO

Other results

Key Insights
Content is king – allocate more to content than programming & design
Experience that syndicates allows us to engage the target market in the channel of their choice
Employing our 70 / 20 / 10 digital marketing mix enabled innovation while still delivering a platform that met objectives
The “echo” tool resonated with everybody – but was too much of an Easter egg
Facebook was the most cost effective channel and had the most engagement

BSTREET Media Mix Philosophy (Updated Jan 2010)

WHAT’S NEXT (live demo)

QUESTIONS?

Polar Ice Case Study

by Phil Barrett on Feb 25, 2010

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