Campaign Summary

Sprite pitched itself as the perfect, cooling solution to oppressive heat with tactics that met generation Z consumers when they were at their hottest.

Strategy

Objective

While the lemon-lime carbonated soft drink category in Vietnam was bustling with high investment going into communication, Sprite had not been very active for some time. Furthermore, Sprite's activities had been only vaguely branded, hampering its performance in terms of awareness, consideration, and sales numbers.

Therefore, the objective of Sprite in Vietnam was not only to launch the global campaign "Heat Happens, Stay Cool" in the local market, but also to leverage it to create a stronger association and a reason for consuming in a relevant occasion, thus helping Sprite to be favored on key attributes.

Context

The global platform Heat Happens, Stay Cool presented Sprite as an effective cooling solution, lending the brand a more specific occasion for consumption than it had hitherto enjoyed. Sprite sought to capitalize on this positioning in the Vietnamese market and give the brand greater memorability there.

Target Audience

Sprite's campaign aimed to connect with members of generation Z from 15 to 25 years old. They're authentic, cool, and confident younger people who are comfortable with "fluidity" in their lives and refuse to fit into the stereotypes expected by society.

Creative and Media Strategy

Sprite's Heat Happens, Stay Cool campaign employed several key tactics.

• Influencers. Leveraging influencers is still one of the most effective solutions to create buzz in the market, but instead of asking influencers who boasted the highest interaction rate to post about Sprite, the brand chose those who had the image most relevant to the theme of heat. These influencers were asked to interact with Sprite's creative concept.
• Dynamic creative optimization (DCO). Instead of bombarding top sites and media, Sprite arranged for its interactive banner to appear and respond to local high temperatures or occasions when the media was talking about the heat.
• Real occasion engagement through digital out-of-home (DOOH). Instead of buying as much OOH as possible everywhere, hoping people noticed the message, Sprite chose to run its DOOH and on-ground activities at locations and occasions that were well-known for being accompanied by obnoxious heat. This approach led to the idea of following the audience to the beach, where they suffer from the heat even when they are trying to have fun.

Execution/Use of Media

Sprite undertook to dramatize the heat and how it affects young people by focusing on three key occasions where heat can feel most acute: traffic, traveling, and crowds.

For the street traffic context, on-ground activation was the key touchpoint. Sprite used DOOH billboards (at high visibility places) to reach consumers in traffic jams. When the sun was at its hottest, Sprite offered them soda to cool down with.

To reach young people in hot crowds, Sprite used WiFi targeting to reach them in places they frequented in their daily schedules, such as CVS, universities, and supermarkets. The brand displayed interactive banners that showed the temperature based on the actual outside temperature and offered them a Sprite discount code to cool down with.

To highlight how the heat can compromise travel, Sprite took its campaign to consumers' favorite summer travel destinations by bringing its giant thermometer to huge beach festivals in four coastal cities — Da Nang, Nha Trang, Ha Long, and Vung Tau — so consumers could experience the real cooling effect of Sprite.

Lastly, Sprite created an online show to engage even when consumers were not in the heat.

Mobile execution was also vital to reaching Sprite's generation Z audience. First, understanding this demographic's fondness for AR filters, Sprite created interesting filters in a mobile-friendly format, which represented daily heated moments that made people lose their cool.

Secondly, Sprite leveraged WiFi targeting on mobile phones to guide communications with consumers, providing Sprite discount codes when they accessed in-store WiFi or clicked on an e-commerce banner.

Finally, Sprite served mobile-friendly bumper ads and display ads on platforms that its consumers visited every day, such as Facebook, YouTube, and ad networks. With just one click, they were directly transferred to an e-commerce site to shop for Sprite products.

Business Impact

As a result of its campaign, Sprite:

• Garnered nearly seven million views of its online show
• Saw a 20-point increase in brand consideration and a 25-point increase in brand affinity
• Generated a 12 percent increase in sales