Unilever’s is putting music sponsorship at the heart of its US launch campaign for ice cream product Fruttare with a Coachella Festival partnership combining with consumer-created music track collaboration with product ambassadors Ne-Yo and Cher Lloyd.
The FMCG giant’s sponsorship of the Palm Springs based Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival saw it launch frozen fruit bar range Fruttare in the USA.
The activation focused on a custom-built branded space called the ‘Fruttare Hangout Booth’.
The space aimed to become a cool little oasis – complete with air conditioning, cushioned seating and a waterfall coming from the ceiling into a pool in the middle of the tent – where hip music lovers could grab a spot of calming R&R, chill out with ice cream bars and write their own messages about the experience on the graffiti blackboards.
The aim was to create a chilled out area for festival goers to relax, socialise and sample free products.
The sampling spanned two Fruttare product lines, Fruit & Milk bars in Strawberry, Coconut, Banana and Peach flavors, and Fruttare Fruit & Juice Bars in Strawberry, Orange, Mango and Lime flavors.
There was also a photo booth element when saw festival goers have their pictures taken in front of various LCD screens showing desert scenes (hot locations with ice cream to cool down – get it!).
The objective was to use Coachella as a platform to generate a pre-launch buzz among influencers on Fruttare’s ‘Millennials’ target.
This, according to Unilever research, is a demographic that is changing the snacking landscape as it prefers healthy snacks and eats 35% percent of meals as snacks (plus, helpfully for Fruttare, they are willing to eat desert before breakfast).
‘Coachella has quickly become the quintessential music festival and is one of the key places where our target consumers are checking out the latest bands and newest sounds,’ says Nick Soukas, Unilever’s director of ice cream.
‘Those consumers tend to be someone who’s positive, upbeat, fun, so as we thought about the brand how it could play those roles in people’s lives, music really helps us connect with that mindset.’
Unilever is a first time sponsor of Caochella in 2013, joining a crew of existing sponsors that includes H&M, Heineken, JBL, Play Station and Red Bull.
Fruttare’s other high-profile music partnerships came in the form of a tripartite collaboration between the brand, the consumer and musicians Ne-Yo and Cher Lloyd.
The initiatives will culminate with the two artists write and perform an original song that is inspired by lyrics submitted on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook and based on the brand’s tagline “It’s All Good” (or hashtag #ItsAllGood.)
A suite of content, all carrying the ‘It’s All Good’ hashtag was carried on Fruttare’s US Facebook page and this was then informed the musicians in the writing process as they penned an original song inspired by the campaign’s theme.
The track itself is due for released later in the summer and will be performed by Lloyd and Ne-Yo at Clear Channel’s IHeartRadio Festival in Las Vegas.
A national TV, digital and social media campaign – from Spanish agency Lola – will also support the launch.
Comment
Sponsorship is clearly playing a significant part in Unilever’s aim to become the leading player in the US ice cream market.
As it battles for supremacy with current category leader Nestlé, Unilever has consistently used sponsorship as the launch pad for its US ice cream new product launches.
Fruttare, which has had a presence in 15 other countries since the late 1980s, ran a Coachella sponsorship and music partnership strategy that replicates elements of Unilever’s American launch strategy for Magnum ice cream in 2011.
This saw the premium brand’s single-serve bar not only in a music-led partnership with the Billboard Music Awards and artists Natasha Bedingfield, but it also sponsored the Tribeca Film Festival.
In addition to the classic attendee sampling strand of the campaign, this launch also featured a partnership with fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, who directed three Magnum-inspired films starring actress Rachel Bilson.
The films were premiered at Tribeca before the movies were posted the Magnum’s Facebook page.
Magnum credits the sponsorship with generating 157,000 Facebook fans and more than 33,000 followers on the brand’s Twitter feed and with helping it win a PR Week Award in the Best Use of Social Media/Digital category.
Its success was further echoed when Magnum renewed the sponsorship for in 2012.
Links
Fruttare Facebook ‘Its All Good’
https://www.facebook.com/Fruttare/app_231509773662524
Fruttare Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/Fruttare?group_id=0
Fruttare Twitter
Unilever Fruttare Website
http://www.unilever.pk/brands/foodbrands/Fruttare.aspx
