A product that sells itself is a little bit of a double-edged sword for brand marketers. Sure, quality alone is enough to lure shoppers in, but where’s the fun in that? Minute Maid Zero Sugar is tackling the old industry adage head-on with its first global campaign, “Sells Itself,” a bid to drive greater sales frequency for the better-for-you beverage option that launched in 2020. Chiefly, the brand is angling to convert juice-averse consumers who associate the category with high sugar counts as zero-sugar offerings turn into a growth driver across parent Coke’s portfolio.
“We’re searching for juice skeptics,” said Alex Ames, creative director of nutrition at The Coca-Cola Company, in an interview. “The primary barrier to juice is sugar, and consumers, we’ve found, weren’t as aware of Minute Maid Zero Sugar as we might want them to be.”
“Sells Itself” takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to promoting Minute Maid Zero Sugar to nonbelievers, looking for to emphasize an unfussy positioning. In a series of latest ads, actor Jon Hamm prepares to hawk the product, only to realize that his doing so is redundant. One spot depicts Hamm, wearing a pointy suit and tie recalling his Don Draper days, as he rehearses the lines “great taste, zero sugar” in front of a mirror before a voiceover kicks in.
“We wanted Jon Hamm to be in our Minute Maid Zero Sugar ad,” the narrator says. “But great taste and 0 sugar didn’t need Jon Hamm to be within the ad in any respect … so we shot it without it him.”
The industrial closes with Hamm walking up to the shoot only to step onto a darkened, barren set. In one other ad, Hamm arrives on a studio lot to begin filming and is quickly confronted by a production team that hurries him to delay a bottle of Minute Maid Zero Sugar and skim his lines. It dawns on the “Fargo” star that the rushed rehearsal might actually be the ad, with the video closing on him asking in befuddlement, “Are we rolling?” Complementing the Hamm-led creative are purely product-centric videos that put a bottle of the beverage front and center.
Minute Maid Zero Sugar is focusing its first paid media effort on digital and social, channels that provide higher targeting and more flexibility for running variations of creative, according to Ames. Studio X, the execution arm of WPP’s bespoke Open X unit for Coke, spearheaded “Sells Itself.” Additional campaign support was provided by X&O, Essence Mediacom, United Talent Agency, Zeno Group and Ogilvy.
Spotify, iHeartRadio, Meta and Snapchat are a number of the places where “Sells Itself” will appear, together with several streaming platforms. Additional elements include a 24-hour Pinterest search page takeover and Coke’s first use of a TikTok Branded Mission feature that allows advertisers to crowdsource content from a various pool of creators and flip well-performing videos into ads. Fitting with the campaign’s larger ethos, the TikTok creator temporary was easy.
“What is you doing less to sell a product? If you’re someone who does essentially the most, how do you do the least?” said Ames.
Keeping it light
“Sells Itself” builds on a refresh for the larger Minute Maid brand that kicked off last yr, the primary leg of a marketing program to get the decades-old product “back to iconicity,” according to Ames. “Filled with Life” was Minute Maid’s first global campaign and introduced a unified latest look inclusive of warmer colours and a softer typeface.
“Over the years, for a variety of reasons, we haven’t been spending as much time with Minute Maid. The first step was that global relaunch,” Ames said. “We needed to start with that latest palette and that latest idea of what we stand for with vitality and the way we bring fruit and juice into that.”
While Coke is ramping up its ambitions for Minute Maid, “Sells Itself” kept things light on the messaging and production front. Hamm was picked because the celebrity face due to his role in popular culture as a “consummate pitch person,” said Ames, noting the actor’s Wikipedia page has a dedicated section to his work for firms corresponding to Mercedes-Benz and H&R Block. Minute Maid has a wealthy history of leveraging pitchmen, with past representatives for the orange juice and lemonade purveyor including Bing Crosby and Robert Loggia.
Because the temporary was so easy, Hamm and director Clay Weiner had room to riff on “Sells Itself,” leading to a number of the campaign’s best ideas and takes. The shoot also wrapped early, which Ames believed was a primary in his profession.
“When we went on set, we didn’t even have an approved script,” said Ames. “We had some script objects, but nobody’s going to out-Hamm the Hamm.”
Flattening the funnel
“Sells Itself” has some traditional media buys, corresponding to out-of-home placements in high-traffic locations. But for essentially the most part, the main focus has shifted away from the published channels that defined the Crosby and Loggia days. The commercials will run on Vizio, Hulu, Amazon, Roku, Canela Media, BET, YouTube, Fuse and One Digital.
Minute Maid is among the many marketers that are jumping on Amazon’s introduction of ads to Prime Video, a change that took effect in late January to some user consternation. Amazon’s ability to link ads with its bustling e-commerce marketplace aligned with the “Sells Itself” concept, and Ames said his team is working with other platforms to find endemic ways to get product moving.
“The wonderful thing about Amazon and the ad tier is it has that breadth, in addition to that connection to retail,” said Ames.
“I don’t think there are a variety of options on the market that are as big of media channels with that connection to retail media,” he continued. “When we’re selling a product that will not be buying a latest automobile, having that immediacy of having the ability to run this content near the purpose of purchase helps to flatten the funnel.”
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