This week, the company is introducing new product packaging and a new mobile game app — featuring Yoda and Darth Maul, characters from the film, originally released in 1999 — created for Brisk’s target market, young adults, particularly males, ages 18 to 29. The initiatives will be the focus of the largest multimedia advertising and marketing campaign that PepsiCo has ever waged for Brisk.
PepsiCo has bottled and marketed Brisk, a Lipton ready-to-drink tea brand, through a joint venture with Unilever, owner of Lipton, since 1991. It has also worked with Lucasfilm to promote the “Star Wars” franchise since 1997.
The new campaign is the brainchild of Mekanism, the San Francisco-based agency PepsiCo hired in 2010 that revived Brisk’s clay-animated commercials from the mid-1990s. The original spots parodied figures like Frank Sinatra and Babe Ruth, while the new Mekanism Brisk ads have featured Eminem — in a Super Bowl XLV commercial — as well as Danny Trejo and Ozzy Osbourne.
Industry observers and executives involved with the campaign say Mekanism’s efforts to increase Brisk’s social media presence and sales have been successful. According to Ian Kovalik, a creative director of Mekanism, the number of Brisk’s Facebook fans has jumped to 950,000 from 10,000 in late 2010.
Eric Fuller, brand director for Brisk, said the brand’s sales had more than doubled in the last two years, to a projected 104 million cases this year from 48 million cases in 2009. Similarly, according to data provided by Larry Finkel, director of food and beverage research for MarketResearch.com, Brisk’s dollar sales in supermarkets, drugstores and mass merchants excluding Walmart rose 12 percent, to $94.3 million, in the year ending April 17, 2011.
That rate of growth far exceeded the rate of dollar sales growth of PepsiCo’s other Lipton ready-to-drink tea brands, Lipton, Lipton Diet, Lipton PureLeaf and Tazo.
Brisk’s rate of dollar sales growth also exceeded that of rival brands Arizona, up 3.5 percent, and Snapple, up 6.2 percent. During this period, Arizona Beverage Company brands generated 30.8 percent of all ready-to-drink tea dollar sales, PepsiCo 29.9 percent and the Dr Pepper Snapple Group 17.2 percent, Mr. Finkel said.
The 3-D release of “Phantom Menace” is slated for Feb. 10, and the “Star Wars” campaign is aimed at continuing Mekanism’s success in increasing Brisk’s social media presence and sales. PepsiCo’s initiatives will include the introduction, starting Tuesday, of special “Star Wars” packaging and promotions at retailers.
Among these are a one-liter, limited-edition bottle of raspberry iced tea with a Darth Maul label; codes under caps of one-liter bottles of Brisk’s 12 teas and juice drinks, which will help buyers play the “Star Wars” mobile game; and a new one-gallon jug, in four flavors, for home consumption.
On Wednesday, a new Brisk Saber mobile game app — developed by Flying Wisdom Studios of San Francisco — will be introduced in the Android and Apple marketplace; players will be able to unlock new game characters, vehicles and weapons by redeeming bottle cap codes. The app will be promoted on Facebook and Hulu, and through Tapjoy, an app ad network, beginning Jan. 9.
On Jan. 15, 15- and 30-second TV spots will start running, initially on Fox Broadcasting’s Sunday night “Automation Domination” programming, and subsequently on network and cable stations like Adult Swim, Comedy Central, MTV, Spike and Syfy.
The 30-second spot shows Yoda and Darth Maul beginning to fight. Darth Maul’s light saber malfunctions many times before he falls into a Brisk vending machine. Although he is reinvigorated when he drinks the iced tea, just as he again tries to attack Yoda, the vending machine squashes him. Yoda says, “Too old for this I’m getting,” while the voice-over proclaims, “That’s Brisk, baby,” a tagline introduced in Brisk’s original animation spots.
More than 500 movie theaters in 15 states that sell PepsiCo beverages will run the TV spots for two months starting Friday; similar radio ads will run starting Jan. 23 on stations in New York and Southern California. Brisk also will hold sampling events across the country from late January through mid-March.
Mr. Fuller said Brisk’s 2012 advertising and marketing budget would be in the “low double digits” of millions of dollars, the most PepsiCo had ever spent to promote the brand. He also said 75 percent of this spending would occur in the first quarter of the year.
According to the research firm Kantar Media, PepsiCo’s annual advertising expenditures for Brisk never exceeded $670,000 in 2007, 2008 and 2010, and totaled $4.7 million in the first nine months of this year. It said PepsiCo did no advertising for Brisk in 2009.
Industry observers and experts differed about the prospects of the PepsiCo campaign.
Noting that recently rising commodity prices had led to higher prices for ready-to-drink teas and subsequent softening of sales growth, Michael Bellas, chairman and chief executive of Beverage Marketing, a consulting company, called Brisk the “dominant value brand” in the ready-to-drink tea category.
“Consumers are more worried about spending and looking for value. My gut feeling is the new 128-ounce packaging and gaming should put Brisk right where it wants to be,” he said.
However, Irma Zandl, a New York-based market researcher who specializes in Generation X and Y consumers and has advised PepsiCo in the past, said the new ads “executionally felt very formulaic.”
“They felt like every other 30-second spot with a superhero,” Ms. Zandl added. “I didn’t feel, ‘Wow, I’ve got to post them on Facebook because they’re so fresh.’ The question is, will young guys think this is so amazing and fabulous? Young consumers are so much savvier and have set the bar so much higher because they see so much.”
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/business/media/to-promote-brisk-tea-pepsi-enlists-the-aid-of-yoda.html?partner=rss&emc=rss