Redd's Apple Ale | Redd's Apple Launcher

Insight

In a crowded marketplace filled with “up-and-coming” alcoholic beverages, from craft beer to hard ciders, MillerCoors needed to set its new Redd’s Apple Ale apart. While an apple-flavoured beer was something different than other beers on the market, it still presented a tall task, especially in targeting a consumer group moving away from all beers except craft.

The war for market share in the beer category is brutal. With millions of Millennials venturing off into spirits and wines—compounded by increasing competition from the growing cider category—Initiative had its work cut out. Redd’s is the first (and only) hybrid beer-cider in the field, but having a unique product isn’t enough in today’s landscape. It needed to position the drink in a way that not only appealed to a notoriously fickle audience, but gave legitimacy as a real beer option, instead of merely a passing fad.

Strategy

When the agency delved into the consumer (males 21-34), one thing struck: More than any other demographic, these consumers needed to be the first to try new food and drinks—almost as a badge of honour. Initiative had the beginnings of a strategy, as it now knew that positioning Redd’s as a “must try” beverage was the way in. 

But do this, it needed to create a buzz loud enough to influence the target in a fun, new way. So the agency set about developing a fully interactive campaign that felt fresh, new, and most of all, buzzworthy.  Initiative needed to engage the consumer in their everyday life by selling the idea of “embracing the unexpected” and branching out from the drab and normal. After brainstorming and testing dozens of ideas, it settled on a two-prong strategy to bring the insight to life.

The first goal was to visualize how different Redd’s is, and in the process mark its stake as a brand trying to do something different. To accomplish this, Initiative set out to highlight the apple’s iconography in American culture and show the fruit in out-of-the-ordinary ways using various out-of-home executions, 60-second spots, in cinema, and on pages in Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly. 

The second part of the strategy was to put the power in the consumer’s hands and execute a completely new way to show the product “in action.”

Execution

Enter Redd’s Apple Launcher: a first of its kind interactive experience that allowed online and app users to launch real apples at a real target, in real time. Users that logged on the website were greeted with several options at the “Redd’s Bar” where they could select what and who they wanted to shoot with the apple launcher.

But the fun didn’t stop there. Because only one user could shoot the launcher at a time, Initiative created a way to let those waiting in the queue engage with the brand, whether that was choosing the song that would play next or what should happen in the funhouse. Users also received points for their performance and were entered to win daily prizes, including Living Social Deal Bucks, sunglasses, and glassware.

It also developed a TV partnership with Big Bang Theory and Myth Busters to promote the event, and partnered with uStream to launch a “uStream Takeover” that got cross-channel pollination from media outlets including CNN, Yahoo!, Washington Post and Monocle.

Results

The Redd’s Apple Launcher campaign “literally” catapulted the beer into consumer’s consciousness and allowed it to overtake its main competitor to become the fifth-fastest growing beer brand in only four months, according to Nielsen.  Volume goals were exceeded six months prior to the first year of sales and it became the #1 selling FMB six-pack at 7-Eleven and Harris Teeter within four months. Awareness from the target for Redd’s reached 57% seven months into launch (Millward Brown, ACT tracker) as well.

The Redd’s Apple Launcher website received over 175,000 visits across just five days with a 92% new visitor average (Google Analytics) and over 27,000 sweepstakes entries were submitted (Ignition) via the app.

Brand integrations also showed considerable success with media platforms including BuzzFeed, Discovery, and Yahoo, delivering over 52 million impressions (Media Mind). Social integration through 13 launcher-related posts reached over 1.5 million people with 6,000+ likes, 439 comments and 320 shares (Facebook Analytics). Integrations into Maxim magazine resulted in over 12K scans and over 2K video sweepstakes entries, while digital promotions through Maxim beat interaction benchmarks by 17 times the average (Data provided from Maxim, benchmark via Media Mind). Now, only a short time after launch, Redd’s has become a household name.

BRAND:

Redd's Apple Ale

BRAND OWNER:

MillerCoors

CATEGORY:

Drinks (alcoholic)

REGION:

United States

DATE:

June - July 2013

AGENCY:

Initiative

MEDIA CHANNEL:

Experiential,Online,Out-of-Home,Print,TV