Surfing a Summer Wave

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Surfing a Summer Wave

Pepsico’s Aquafina launch gets a multi-platform boost

It can be difficult to make a splash in the crowded bottled water market, so when Pepsico introduced Aquafina in the summer of 2001, it went looking for a big wave to ride in on. It found just the right one in E! Entertainment, where a strong celebrity-centric media brand targets the very summer channel surfers Aquafina was looking to refresh.

The waters of cable were perfect for the Aquafina launch, according to John Swift, group director at OMD USA, Pepsico’s media buying agency. “Cable gives you an opportunity to be a little more creative and impactful,” he says. And within that sea, Swift says, E! offered the multiple media exposure for which Aquafina thirsted.

“Their programming really seemed to fit the personality of the brand, and they developed a customized summer promotion that utilized multiple platforms that we felt really delivered a lot of impact in a short period of time,” Swift says.

Building on a series of 30-second spots featuring Aquafina’s tagline, “We promise nothing” (emphasizing the brand’s purity and simplicity), E!’s cross-platform approach capitalized on the network’s adult 18-49 year-old demographic. Spots aired on both E! and its sister network, Style, with an equally heavy E! Online presence.

The creative for the five spots featured the product against a clean white background, Aquafina bottles splashing into crystal pools of water, droplets bursting across the screen in refreshing blasts. Actress Lisa Kudrow provided the voice-overs, which wryly noted “Aquafina is pure nothing.”

Among the clinchers for Aquafina was the opportunity to sponsor “Heat Wave,” a summer-long series of 30-second E!-branded entertainment interstitials. Updated weekly and aired each day on the network, “Heat Wave” features celebrity-saturated updates of the latest summer-movie openings, concert tours and top-selling CDs and DVDs, and was billboarded by Aquafina’s own Kudrow-voiced spots.

Tom Prigoda, vice president of integrated sales at E!, says the “Heat Wave” sponsorship lent strength to the launch. “It associated the brand with something that was timely,” he says. “It served viewers, and ultimately they’re consumers, with entertainment information and aligned their brand with it.”

Swift says the “Heat Wave” interstitials were a good place to connect the idea of Aquafina refreshment. “It was a creative way of making the spots more powerful,” he says.

E! additionally offered a strong online promotional opportunity through a summer sweepstakes that reinforced Aquafina’s tagline. The “Celebrity Summer Hiatus Do Nothing Sweepstakes” also featured the Aquafina brand in a sponsoring role, offering the winner a chance to live like a celebrity for a week by being wined, dined, pampered and purified without having to lift a finger.

The grand prize for the contest was a week of free maid and butler service, nightly catered dinners, chauffeured limousine service and a full cleansing and beauty treatment at a local day spa. The sweepstakes got heavy promotion on E!, with spots driving viewers to E! Online to register for the contest. E! Online also offered Aquafina ad units strategically placed to reach the brand’s target audience. Ads would appear, for example, in E! Online’s home page and in a section called “Out and About,” which reports celebrity sightings in restaurants, clubs and other venues, offering fans a glimpse of the stars’ personal pursuits.

Prigoda says E! has developed a solid track record for such cross-promotion. “There’s a strong link between the E! television viewer and the E! Online user,” he says.

In addition to the record number of contest entrants, Aquafina benefited from the thematic reinforcement of the “Do Nothing” sweepstakes. “We felt that the promotion filled in nicely with what we were trying to do creatively,” he says.

And further drawing upon its multiplatform strengths, E! also provided Aquafina with another point of exposure-a special summer concert event featuring a top rock group. The invitation-only concert, which was filmed by E! in Los Angeles and then aired on the network on multiple occasions, gave Aquafina a more organic kind of exposure through some subtle signage, product placement (Aquafina was available as the sole water refreshment at the concert), and category exclusivity during the commercials.

“Within the body of the special were people enjoying Aquafina, which contributed to the overall allure and appeal of trying to launch the brand,” Prigoda says.

The combination of the “Heat Wave” interstitials sponsorship, online sweepstakes and concert sponsorship and product placement all made for a substantial thematic reinforcement of Aquafina and its “nothing” message. “We tried to string things together with a common strategic thread,” Swift says.

Prigoda says the interplay between E!’s multiple media platforms gave Aquafina a diversified exposure with well-directed continuity. “When you bundle all that up, it ultimately helped Aquafina to have a successful product launch,” Prigoda says.

“[E!’s] programming really seemed to fit the personality of the brand...and a customized promotion...delivered a lot of impact in a short period of time.”

—John Swift, group director, OMD USA

Reprinted with the permission of Adweek Magazines.

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