Case Study
Five Alive's fresh sound delivers solid ROI
From 2001 to 2006 Five Alive held a strong brand position in the juice drinks market. By 2007 the influx and growing popularity of enhanced beverages such as vitamin-fortified waters, was creating new competition and challenges for maintaining the brand’s relevance and top-of-mind awareness amongst its primary consumers, men 18-34.
Challenge
The challenge was twofold – first to reinvigorate the brand and develop a deeper connection with its target. Five Alive set its sights on relating to the carefree attitude and random nature of young men, and offering them a forum for exploring and sharing new discoveries with friends. Precise targeting would become a priority over mass reach.
Second, having re-assessed the price-value aspect of television, it needed to develop an efficient and innovative media strategy to bolster its marketing and allow the brand to dominate.
Solution
Fun, innovation and integration became the foundation of the media solution: a completely “unbranded” campaign that used radio, online, out-of-home in restaurants and bars, and a new brand microsite, supercrazyalive.com, to transform everyday situations into fun and surprising experiences.
Fueled by Foundation Research findings – which state that a solid percentage of men 18-34 not only listen to the radio while online, but also search for products online after hearing them on radio – Five Alive chose radio to play a key role in interacting with its target, and to send listeners to the supercrazyalive.com site.
Radio allowed cost-efficient targeting in the two markets offering the greatest potential for consumption – Toronto and Vancouver. Using highly-targeted formats, stations were selected with the perfect personality and audience.
Sound became an important unifying element of the campaign through not-only radio, but sound chips in restaurant posters and on the microsite itself.
With a healthy dose of risk, 15-second radio spots with no mention of “Five Alive” appealed to listeners’ sense of curiosity. 5-second spots, dubbed “Blinks”, created intrigue by calling out the URL supercrazyalive.com in between programming. As a radio-first, this tactic was unexpected by listeners because it was outside of commercial sets.
For greater excitement and target-group interaction, announcers called listeners to engage them in “crazy” and “random” supercrazyalive.com conversations on air.
Results
Five Alive’s media strategy and inventive creative approach clearly broke through to reach the target. Post-campaign awareness of supercrazyalive.com was measured against a national sample of adults 18+. Awareness was attributed to all three media but notably radio generated the highest return on investment.
| | % Budget Spent | Awareness, A 18+ | Index |
| Radio | 20 | 27 | 135 |
| Public restrooms | 24 | 30 | 125 |
| Online | 50 | 30 | 60 |
Almost half of those aware of the site stated that they had visited it.
Five Alive and its agencies Leo Burnett and Cossette won a MIA (Media Innovation Award) award for the campaign.
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