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With a cult following for their Kraken Black Spiced Rum, Proximo Spirits challenged Awaken to unleash a beast unlike any other and launch their world-first premix with Aussie drinkers.
The big challenge? Finding a way to achieve this in a world coming to grips with the outbreak of COVID-19. Our campaign launch coincided with the spread of this global pandemic, so it was essential that we pivot and find ways to use media to connect with customers who are increasingly drinking and socialising at home.
We pride ourselves on being smaller and fiercer than our big-budget competitors – and this campaign was the perfect opportunity for the Awaken team to demonstrate our knack for being resourceful and strategic.
Stay-at-home orders changed consumer behaviour from shopping at large centres to frequenting local suburban shopping malls. Restaurants and bars were replaced with home cooking, dinner parties and backyard bbqs. This presented us with a huge opportunity.
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We immediately pivoted our outdoor buy to focus on smaller suburban and regional centres with bottle shops, and changed our digital buy to focus on proximity targeting, moving away from where people used to work and play, to where they lived and shopped.
Another challenge was that the parent spirit was in a period of sustained growth that could not be cannibalised by this new format. To reach ambitious sales targets of the premix without risking the dilution of the parent spirit brand, we needed to steal market share from beer and other RTD brands.
Following extensive quantitative, qualitative and mobile ethnographic research we explored the target audience that was most likely to trial and purchase – and defined a consumption occasion to set us apart in the cluttered premix category.
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Our ultimate goal was to:
GET those at the “step up” transition period in life
WHO are now enjoying drink largely at home due to COVID-19
TO elevate their at home experience with Kraken premixes instead of beer or spirits
BY reflecting what they’ve been hunting for in our bold taste, mysterious heritage and intriguing narrative
SO we can achieve a successful launch for the premix, while continuing to grow our parent spirit.
The target market (predominantly males) were now drinking mostly at home, sometimes with mates, and missing their pre-COVID nights out. They still wanted to have a premium drinking experience, even if they’re spending Saturday night at home with their partner and kids.
While most premixes in market bill themselves as easy-to-drink experiences, this customer was hunting for a premium, bold and interesting premixed choice. Previously premixes were associated with Australian youth or unruliness, but now customers were looking for a premix to savour at home while maintaining the quality bar experience.
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We smashed the launch period (to end of May 2020) sales target by 185%.
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We not only avoided cannibalising the masterbrand spirit sales, but actually boosted them by 32% (June YTD).
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We successfully engaged and converted the beer drinkers as much as habitual rum drinkers. Our core growth audience of beer drinkers drove the greatest volume of clicks to retailers (45%). Their Interaction rates and CPC were also similar levels to existing rum drinkers (only 2% more).
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Social media drove huge hype in the lead-up to launch with 3.76 post reactions, 16.27 comments and 0.6 shares per minute in the first 24 hours, eventually leading to over 6k post likes, over 28k comments, over 900 shares and reaching over 650,000 people – without spending a cent and outperforming every other major premix launches in the same time.
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And it wasn’t just consumers that took notice – distribution increased by 22% since launch, with a total of 3496 distribution points by end of May 2020 across Woolworths (Dans/BWS) and Independents with Coles recently signing on also – huge for a new product.
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And the media was intrigued too – earned media went far beyond the usual trade publications and went into the mainstream with hero coverage including The Daily Mail, The Brag, Man of Many and Delicious, with a total reach of 7,842,000+.
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