The success story of the soft drink brand Oasis

At the beginning of the advertisement era, the advertisers used functional arguments to sell products. In the food sector for example, the advertisers communicated on original flavors or used attractive food photographs to create the desire among the customers. However, as the competition became more and more fierce, the functional arguments were not enough to make customers prefer its brand rather than another one.

A success story

Oasis, a French soft drink brand, found the perfect communication strategy to arouse interest among customers and increase its customers’ loyalty. Indeed, the brand’s advertisement agency Marcel had the brilliant idea to create funny and endearing fruit characters. Based on Oasis drinks flavors, the agency had created from scratch fruit characters which have each one its own personality. Based on puns, the fruit characters had been designed according society stereotypes.

For example, Ramon Tafraise is the typical womanizer, who can be very arrogant sometimes. His character refers to the French expression “Ramener sa fraise” (to be arrogant).

Mangue De Bol is a clumsy mango that do a lot of silly things. His name and character refer to the French expression “Manquer de bol”(to have a lack of luck).

Frambourgeoise is a typical bourgeois women. She is mannered and she has her own ideas and opinions.

 

By introducing this funny and interesting fruit team through stories and imageries, the brand offers numerous and diversified “fruit” content to French people. In fact, Oasis use brand content strategy to communicate on its brand.

Multi-channel strategy

The strength of Oasis communication is also that the brand uses the current events to create stories starring the fruit team. By using a funny and off-beat tone, the brand has always content to show to its fans.

This is an example of a Facebook post regarding the current Cannes festival. We can see the main characters of a new web serie called “L’effet Papayon” walking down the red carpet as real stars.

 To arouse interest and maintain brand awareness, the brand creates year-round numerous and diversified content on multiple channels: On TV, radio and outdoor display, Oasis creates commercial ads. The brand is also very active on the web thanks to a complete digital ecosystem; they are present in all the social media that are popular in France (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) and on each social media, they have a specific communication strategy.

Thanks to a strong editorial line and a multi-channel strategy, Oasis has become a very popular brand in only few years. This brand is also a reference in advertisement world.

Some figures about Oasis

Facebook: 3,3 billion fans
Twitter:  5 735 tweets, 1 056 posted photographs and videos, 137 000 followers
Youtube : 8 created playlists, 77 860 followers

“L’effet Papayon”, a new web serie

To go further in the brand content, the brand decided this year to create a web serie for the fruit team stories. Indeed, as commercial ads and communication imageries only deliver short messages, the brand decided to create a web serie because the format is longer. The objective is to increase the fans engagement.

Create your dream bar with Ballantine’s

You are a young entrepreneur who likes the nightlife? We have the perfect contest for you!
From February 3rd to March 22nd, the Whisky brand Ballantine’s organizes the “Ballantine’s project bar”. The brand wants to give the opportunity to the most creative entrepreneurs to submit their ideal bar projects. The winner will have the chance to see his or her project becoming reality: the brand will create his or her dream bar in the first floor of a famous Parisian club. People and the brand’s fans will be able to visit it during a short-term period.

The contest mechanism

From February 3rd to March 22nd: Interested entrepreneurs will have to submit their application on the dedicated Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ballantinesfrance/app_798662846816674).

On May 5th: Only 3 participants will be shortlisted by a panel of judges. The three best projects will then be posted on the dedicated Facebook page and will be submitted to the internet users’ votes.

On June 17th: The winner’s name will be announced by Ballantine’s.

What are the objectives of such campaign and why will it be a success?

As the campaign aims to reach young entrepreneurs, we can easily deduce that the brand wants to seduce a young target. Indeed, Ballantine’s is the second scotch seller of Europe. As a consequence, we can think that the brand doesn’t need to increase its brand awareness or its premium image. However, every brand has to work on the future and try to seduce as early as possible their future prospects. And with alcohol, the more we are young, the more we prefer to drink “sweet” drinks as cocktails or mixed hard drinks. And drinking spirituous drinks is more appreciated for more aged people.
So, creating a campaign dedicated to the young is a mean for the brand to be present in the targets’ mind and incite them to try new drinks.

Moreover, Ballantine’s has created an online contest which uses all the current digital codes: Creation of the contest on the most popular social media (Facebook), ask for customers participation through the project submissions and give the power to the internet users by allowing them to choose the final winner! Thus, the “Ballantine’s project bar” can give a modern and open-minded image for the brand. It proves that, even if the brand exists for decades, Ballantine’s is a brand which evolves with its customers and adapts itself to their “language” and media consumption.  It proves that Ballantine’s is a modern brand who can still attract the young generations.

And the last but not the least, the last objective of this campaign can be that the brand wants to increase the number of its community members. Having an active and a big community present many advantages: it encourages the word of mouth around the brand and allows Ballantine’s to be better ranked in the search engines on specific keywords (thanks to the creation of conversations about Ballantine’s on social media, forums…).
And to answer to the question “why will this campaign be a success?” I’ll say first that the concept of the campaign is innovative. Indeed, it is a contest concept that can possibly attract lots of young entrepreneurs as it is a very funny and interesting project to create. Indeed, the majority of young entrepreneurs have been at least once in a bar. So they can easily have creative ideas to improve and to create their ideal bar. Moreover, the idea of being able to see its project becoming true has a cool part. The winner can even have an audience and have his or her moment of fame.

 In addition, the contest mechanism is well thought. The panels of jury represented by a group of professionals (marketing, design and business) gives an added value for the participants who will have the impression to create a real professional project. And the fact that the contest takes place in several steps with exact dates contributes to create some suspense and curiosity.

However, the brand will have to pay attention to maintain its community and interested people regularly informed about the contest in order to stay in their minds. As the contest period is long, it is easy to forget so Ballantine’s will have to keep its audience watchful until the end of the contest, in a way or another.

2.0 Campaign

During the traditional media era, the brand communication was top down, eg. The brand delivered its message and the consumers were supposed to listen to. There was no interaction possible between the brand and its audience. 

Today, with the democratization of the Internet, the conversation is possible between the two parts. The consumers take even pleasure now to impose their opinion to the brand, to make their unsatisfaction hear... 

But if the brands had considered at first this new kind of communication as a threat, they have rapidly taken advantage of that. Nowadays, The brands use the customers will to participate in order to create interactive advertisement campaign. In fact, involving its audience in its campaign permits to the brand to differentiate itself from all its competitors' promotional messages.

Facebook page of the contest: https://www.facebook.com/ballantinesfrance/app_798662846816674 

Carambar, the best joke of 2013

In France, Carambar is a well-known brand. Loved by the children and appreciated by the parents, this brand is famous for the jokes which accompany the brand’s candies. Even if the Carambar’s jokes aren’t always funny, the USP of Carambar is clear: With Carambar, spend a relaxing time eating a good candy and laughing about a joke.

 In 2013, the brand created a buzz with a false announcement: they announced that, from now on, they planned to replace the traditional jokes by educational games in the candies. Carambar’s customers and media were immediately alarmed, panicked and desperately lost. Indeed, everybody was asking why the brand decided that. The fans have even created a fan page to beg the brand not to abandon its famous jokes… In less than 5 days, everybody was aware of the brand’s announcement and everybody was talking about that. 

When the brand and its agency decided to confess via an Youtube video, that one gathered 93% of “Like” and only 7% of “Unlike”.  In total, the campaign has generated:

- 13 000 additional fans on the brand’s Facebook fan page / 87% of positive comments on the fan page

- 50 000 tweets which allowed to rank the brand in the “TT” (trending topics of Twitter) six times 

With such a media hit and such positive reactions after the reveal phase, the Carambar campaign is a brilliant case study of successful buzz!  

Few questions must come to your mind: What is exactly a “buzz” and how did Carambar manage the campaign to have those positive results? “That is the question!!”

BUZZ MARKETING

According to the specialized blog SearchCRM.com, buzz marketing can be defined like that:

“Buzz marketing is a viral marketing technique that attempts to make each encounter with a consumer appear to be a unique, spontaneous personal exchange of information instead of a calculated marketing pitch choreographed by a professional advertiser. Historically, buzz marketing campaigns have been designed to be very theatrical in nature. The advertiser reveals information about the product or service to only a few "knowing" people in the target audience. By purposely seeking out one-on-one conversations with those who heavily influence their peers, buzz marketers create a sophisticated word-of-mouth campaign where consumers are flattered to be included in the elite group of those "in the know" and willingly spread the word to their friends and colleagues.”

What is important to remember here is the following words: viral marketing technique, word-of-mouth campaign & influence their peers.

Nowadays, consumers are less and less influenced by advertisements. They are constantly submitted to brand messages. Consequence: they don’t pay attention anymore to traditional ads. In the other hand, they are more likely to listen to influencers (relatives, bloggers…). Buzz marketing is based on these peer-to-peer relations. By revealing information to only few “knowing” people in the target audience, these influencers will spread the word to their peers and generate spontaneous conversations about the brand. If the influencers are well chosen, only few days are needed to spread the word among the brand’s target audience. This is why we say that buzz marketing is a viral marketing technique since it is spontaneous and very fast. Another important characteristic of buzz marketing is the price of such campaign. Indeed, since it is a campaign based on word-of-mouth, it’s very cheap for a company to settle a buzz campaign. For example, for the Carambar campaign, in five days, the brand did the results of a year campaign and with a budget of an activation wave …

Finally, the most complicated part in implementing a buzz campaign is the conception part, when thinking about the buzz mechanics.

BUZZ MECHANICS

To create the buzz, the Carambar’s agency (Fred&Farid) used three powerful levers: social media, PR and false information materials.

On March 20th 2013, Carambar announced on its social pages (Facebook & Twitter) that a big news will be announced in the next days, changing the brand’s history. In the same time, selected journalists received at their offices a school bag containing a press kit. Few minutes later, the journalists began to react on their social networks (Facebook, Twitter & Instagram): they told to their followers that Carambar decided to stop its jokes in favor of educational games. By sharing the news, the journalists also shared their opinions: astonishment, perplexity and big disappointment. The buzz is on the road…

The journalists had waited for the evening to confirm the news after contacting Kraft Foods Europe PR department. Indeed, they were suspicious about this information since the joke day (April, 1st) was going to come in few days.

The next day, the brand confirmed again the rumors: it published on its Twitter account the new corporate ad (video) which emphasizes again on the new brand positioning. Thus, media (TV, newspaper, radio) relay the information to their public audience. At that moment, all the French people are convinced that Carambar has definitively changed its brand promise…

The reveal takes place on March 25th 2013: the brand announced on its Twitter account that “The end of jokes… #itwasajoke”!

Thus, social media and PR were used to spread the word and create a “Carambar movement” within the media scope and false information materials were used to erase the last doubts from the media and the consumers. 

References:

http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/definition/buzz-marketing

http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/societe/20130325.OBS2940/carambar-histoire-d-un-canular-tres-mediatique.html

http://frenchweb.fr/expert-un-point-de-vue-different-sur-loperation-carambar-par-gregory-pouy/107084