Rockstar introduced "Bro-Code," the first branded community for blue-collar workers, reinforcing its position as their ultimate champion. The campaign disrupted entrenched energy drink brands by creating a targeted, value-driven hub. Through a strategic media mix and tailored engagement, Rockstar grew market share by 22 percent and sales volume by 54 percent.
Rockstar wanted to shake up 2024 after a successful national market entry in 2023. Embracing the role of the "blue-collar champion," Rockstar introduced Bro-Code, the first-in-market branded community for blue-collar audiences, with three key areas:
As a challenger brand of an ultra-competitive category, Rockstar wanted to avoid the endless money-pit competition and opt for a more sustainable yet innovative way to bring value to its drinkers. Therefore, this campaign was the inaugural launch of Rockstar's long-term vision of the Bro-code hub. Rockstar planned to both disrupt the loyal drinkers of current established ED brands and convert them into loyal drinkers of a unified blue-collar community of Rockstar, thus fostering long-term relationships, sustained engagement, and repeated purchases.
Rockstar harnessed key insights about its drinkers — blue-collar workers — to shape the Bro-hub project. These primarily male workers, aged 25 to 45, ranging from drivers to laborers of all sectors depend on high-energy beverages to power through demanding physical tasks. Their hard work fosters tight-knit teams united by values of authenticity, practicality, and camaraderie, creating a strong spirit of brotherhood through forming recreational football teams, finding practical deals, and staying connected on community-driven platforms like Zalo. This deep understanding of their lifestyle and connections drives Rockstar's strategy to engage this community meaningfully and innovatively.
The media and creative strategies worked seamlessly to create the best possible experience for Rockstar drinkers.
The media strategy served as the bedrock of the campaign, selecting media touchpoints most relevant to workers as a whole and to individual occupations of the blue-collar working class. The journey carefully followed three stages of driving awareness, conversion, and loyalty:
With a strong media strategy as the campaign's foundation, the creative strategy now adopted a platform-first approach to tailor both Rockstar's messaging and visuals to best match the airing platforms. That said, every single creative carried a sincere, approachable, and authentic tone of voice that made the assets feel native and natural, portraying Rockstar as a dependable and exciting champion of the blue-collar worker.
The journey for Rockstar's target audience was carefully curated thanks to valuable insights into their lives, with investment for digital at a healthy 65 to 75 percent ratio.
First, the brand reached out to workers in all walks of life by sharing its Bro-code vision through occupation-specific touchpoints. Radio programs spoke to long-distance drivers as they traversed Vietnam while on-ground sampling and out-of-home (OOH) displays seamlessly reached workers at key industrial zones and major construction sites at break-times. All of them were supported online through the power of worker-centric social communities and the intelligence of AI-powered algorithms on YouTube, TikTok, and the latest innovations of Grab Icon.
These touchpoints capped off into the biggest football tournament in workers' history via a partnership with the National Worker Union. During these games, workers could unite through their passion for football, try Rockstar's drinks and get entertained after long days at work.
But most importantly, laborers were introduced to the exclusive Bro-code hub on Zalo alongside instant buy/instant win promotions where they were guaranteed rewards with each repeat Rockstar purchase. The hub is a one-stop-shop for them, with plans to roll out benefits including: mobile top-ups, free highway tolls, free product usage at rest-stops, and an emergency hotline from fellow brothers.
The unifying force behind this journey was Rockstar's CRM technology and framework. From start to finish, each medium incentivized users to register their info. Radio programs encouraged dial-in engagement, samplings generated leads for extra discounts, the football tournament required sign up to participate, and promotions called for data sharing to record players' progress. Their info was fed into Rockstar's Bro-code CRM system and segmented to different blue-collar occupations for further usage.
From there, the Bro-code hub tailored the value offerings to each occupation and ramped up its engagement activities. Participants of promotions had their progress recorded and received motivational messages to keep going to unlock valuable prizes. What's more, workers got notified of free mobile top-ups when their data was running low while long-distance drivers with GPS-enabled would receive FOC highway fee, with Zalo Bro-code monitoring the hotline to support them 24/7.
Moreover, Rockstar partnered with Grab via its Monthly Award program to comprise data of top-voted Rockstar Resilient drivers to present them with much needed financial and in-kind support. All this created a truly engaging and valuable community where workers can feel connected and cherished, honoring the brand's vision of becoming the champion of blue collars.
Rockstar came off a very successful 2023 with its nationwide expansion. However, as a challenger brand in an investment-heavy category, Rockstar understood the importance of going deep and niche to be cost-effective. At the same time, Rockstar recognized the importance of growing even further through trials and repeat purchases from its core audience. Therefore, this campaign is extra crucial for Rockstar because it served as the foundation for the brand to first disrupt the loyal drinkers of big ED brands and build exposure, then steadily convert, engage, and protect its loyal consumer base in a sustainable yet exciting fashion.
The initial phase of Rockstar's campaign was highly successful. Vietnamese blue-collar workers have strongly connected with its message and were enthusiastic about the brand's activations and upcoming projects, leading to more than 600,000 participants joining the Rockstar Bro-code hub.
This positive momentum has resulted in significant business gains for Rockstar, with a 22 percent increase in market share and a 54 percent increase in sales volume. Additionally, Rockstar forged a strong connection with the Grab community, successfully recruiting drivers and shippers into the Grab Monthly Award program within just two months of its launch (over 100 percent planned participants).
