Challenge

The fundamental challenge facing Vimto was one of mental availability. Even outside it’s heartland, the brand had solid distribution. But North-West ex-pats aside, Vimto was not a brand people elsewhere thought about. And even when Vimto did come to mind, few understood what it was all about. At best, it was a bit old-fashioned and just for small kids. At worst, weird and strange tasting (what is that flavour?). And either way, ‘not for me’. Compound that with a low share of voice even in its ‘fruit flavoured’ sub-sector (let alone taking colas into account), and you could see the problem. We needed to reframe what this regional oddity stood for, giving it an emotionally positive role in people’s lives above and beyond being the flavoursome soft drink they didn’t realise it was. And do this with creative that would very much punch about it’s weight. 

Insight

In looking for a consumer truth we could tap into, something that was as true for self-buying teens as it was for family-gatekeeper parents, one thing become very clear to us. Everyone feels pressure to conform nowadays: from society, media, friends, family, even ourselves. Pressure to look and behave in certain ways, to ‘be’ and ‘do’, to succeed and achieve, and feeling judged if we fall short of expectations. Whether that’s teens being questioned on the coolness of their clothes, or mums and dads on their parenting style. But what unites all of us in the face of this pressure, is a wish for the chance to just be true to ourselves, make our own choices and be accepted for who we are.

Strategy

Being different, refreshingly so, is in Vimto’s DNA: the brand has always zigged where others zag. So this insight into the pressures people face to not be themselves resonated with us, and seemed an opportunity for the brand to be more purposeful. Where society is telling people to look and be a certain way, we wanted to take a stand for being true to ‘you’. To say that Vimto doesn’t just believe the world is better with more different in it, but that the potential for this (whether big or small) is there in all of us. We called this potential for difference the Vimto Spirit, with our role being to help people discover and embrace their own uniqueness, and to nurture it in others…even if that was no more than love for a certain purple soft drink.

Solution

Given that Vimto is a multi-format brand, with a variety of different shoppers and consumers, it was important for us to have a flexible, overarching organising platform that would allow us to activate consistently in comms no matter who we were talking to and in what channel. And that is what the idea of celebrating the Vimto Spirit has given us.

Our initial campaign single-minded targeted teens wanting reassurance about doing their own thing with an ‘I See Vimto In You’ shout-out. A highly focused media buy around Love Island delivered massive efficiencies on a limited budget, supported with digital video, social media and experiential activity. And in all channels, adopting an executional approach that played games with the media and environment, helping teens reveal their Vimto side without us needing to say explicitly how different we felt they were (a direct approach that was rejected).

Showing the power of a big idea, in our second campaign we shifted focus entirely, switching to parents buying squash for the family. And though the executional idea was very different, celebrating the Vimto Spirit remained at it’s heart. It was just that this time we encouraged parents to ‘Find Your Different’, whether their own or their kids. The idea being it’s hard to know what the ‘you’ that defines you is. It can be a journey of discovery with no right answer, so we encouraged people to try everything because If you don’t you’ll never know otherwise.

Results

With TV delivering ROI more than twice the FMCG norm according to IRI econometrics, Snapchat share rates 72% above norms, and digital engagement 8x industry benchmarks, celebrating the Vimto Spirit has been hugely successful for the brand. Not only did we help Vimto reach its highest sales ever, this was also the brand’s first time over £100m sales, its first appearance in the Grocer Top 100 and, in what was possibly the most rewarding achievement, the first time it had overtaken Ribena to take the no.2 slot in its core squash market.