Anthony Martinez of vitaminwater will discuss how the brand paired up with musical artists -- and the results of its endeavors -- for its Uncapped campaign.
Presenter: Anthony Martinez, sr. communications strategist, vitaminwater @amartinez08
2. AN EVOLVED CONSUMER ENGAGEMENT MODEL
TV | Outdoor | Radio | Print | Mobile
Brand PR – Print, TV, Radio, Blogs
Equipment | Websites | Packages | Distribution Fleet
Social Media | In-store
2
15. parting thoughts…
• don’t lose sight of brand’s heritage
• create content that travels
• find the right partners
• have patience
15
Editor's Notes
Hello everyone. I’m honored to represent The Coca-Cola Company, sharing what I believe is some of the most exciting work around the company for one of the most important brands – vitaminwater – in our product portfolio. But first I want to talk about how The Coca-Cola Company thinks about marketing. After all, there’s a lot we can – and do – learn from our friends in Atlanta who took home 30 Cannes Lion awards, including two Grand Prix’s.
We call this approach being “liquid and linked”. “Liquid” because the market landscape is constantly changing and communications should be multi-faceted and expressed across multiple platforms and so should our content. “Linked” because no matter which platforms are used or how, all brand messages must remain “linked” to a brand’s core strategies and objectives.
In Paid, we focus on Innovating. In Owned, it’s about Activating. In Shared, the focus is Integrating. In Earned, we seek to drive Engagement with our key stakeholders and consumers. And we continue to deliver great Storytelling through our content.
I’m really here to talk to you about one of our more exciting brands in the Coca-Cola portfolio vitaminwater
vitaminwater’s story is one that’s strongly connected to emerging music culture. Its music heritage pre-dates Coca-Cola’s purchase of the brand five short years ago when a relationship with a rising hip hop star named 50-Cent was formed. Its music heritage pre-dates Coca-Cola’s purchase of the brand five short years ago when a relationship with a rising hip hop star named 50-Cent was formed. Perhaps you remember Formula 50 ? vitaminwater has activated in the music space for over 9 years with talent partnerships, retail programming, and event integrations like the VMA’s, BET Awards, Bonaroo, etc. The relationship with 50 was an organic one. He was an upcoming rapper in the space. We saw him drinking vitaminwater in a reebok commercial – 10 years ago – we saw some outtakes of the commercial. And depending on who’s telling the story, he reached out to vitaminwater to get involved with the brand. It was the first organic, legit partnership with the brand. no one sat in the room and said let’s sign 50. it was on accident.
There was a period of time, however, where the brand got away from that approach. Music became one of many spaces activated. At one point we had relationships with more than 38 different athletes across the MLB, NBA, NFL, NASCAR, and NHL. This worked for us for a while. It made our local bottling partners happy while giving our field marketing leads something to talk about/activate . The trouble is that when you stretch a brand across so many different areas, what it stands for in the mind of consumers begins blurring. It gets harder to stay relevant to the space where it started – music. And you begin losing credibility. Over rotation to a sports brand. thought we were the gatorade challenger.
in order to refocus the brand for the consumer, the team started to strip away the dozens of endorsements, and re-build the credibility in music.” core to this strategy was the introduction of a live music initiative called “uncapped” that was meant to re-engage consumers in a passion area that’s important to them. They put the focus back on emerging talent with a goal of re-gaining credibility in music through a content platform highlighting live music and storytelling
Why music? In addition to it being part of vitaminwater’s DNA, music is the number one passion point among young, multi-cultural teens. We know that teens have a strong emotional connection to the music they listen to. We identified seven universal emotions derived from music among teens: peace, uplift, happiness, thoughtfulness, connectedness, nostalgia, altered state. By engaging consumers in an area that’s important to them we’re more likely to create content that travels – an important part of the Earned equation – carrying the brand’s message with it.
By engaging consumers in an area that’s important to them we’re more likely to create content that travels – an important part of the Earned equation – carrying the brand’s message with it.
the uncapped initiative has evolved to take a central role in 2012 plans. While there was a lot of success in what was activated in 2011, the initiative wasn’t entirely connected to the brand’s campaign message. By making a conscious effort to make this linkage, we’re now telling a story through this content that organically delivers the brand’s message of being your wingman – preparing you for whatever life throws at you. Simply put, expect the unexpected. The uncapped concert experience is a physical manifestation of this message. With the help of our partner, The Fader, we’re pairing unexpected artists together, transforming unexpected locations into music venues, and adding surprise elements, such as unexpected guest artists/collaborations, to each show.
Play uncapped promo video: PDK: http://bit.ly/P0R9sO (need to ask Tara for file) or Chi: http://bit.ly/TXkvHC
The program is still in market, so it would be a little premature for me to share results. There have been, however, pockets of success that we’re excited by, let us know that we’re headed in a positive direction. Excitement from show to show continues to build in each market. In Austin, for example, we had more than 10k RSVP’s. And the lines to get in were some of the biggest we’ve seen. And we’ve trended locally on twitter for the 4 recent shows. From a press perspective, From a press perspective we have been leveraging each of the individual events, artists and pieces of content with national and local media, resulting in over 5 million organic impressions. Examples of coverage in key outlets include: national – mtv, us magazine; local news – nbc chicago, detroit free press, seattle weekly, etc.; music online sites and blogs – rap radar, pure volume, xxl, hip hop wired, urban daily. And there’s been more than 48 million video views of uncapped content. And strong positive engagement by our fans on Facebook and Twitter.
In summary, here are a few things we learned: don’t lose sight of your brand’s heritage. To create content that truly travels, engage consumers in areas that are important to them. This isn’t always easy, but finding the intersection of your brand’s heritage and consumer interest areas is where this starts. And that leads to the next point, which is to always tie it back to your brand’s message. After all, any brand can create influential music content. Lastly, find the right partners to pull it all off. For us, The Fader has provided an incredible amount of credibility to our program. And we’ve been able to scale the content from this experience with our partners at. rebuilding credibility and being credible in music takes a long time, and requires patience from business managers who are tend to look for immediate year on year roi. with something as sensitive as the music space, particularly the resistance of influence from brands in the space, doing it right (building slow and credible is the best way to bring long term growth) is critical. we found success by getting alignment from senior leadership of the steady and slow strategy (one that we have to remind them of regularly).