Results and Effectiveness

In all a total of 48 Mizone Moments were aired between late September 2010 and March 2011. Mizone Sports Drink sales grew by 20% in the first five months of the campaign being live, versus the same period the previous year. And sales have continued into 2011 with double-digit growth.* Brand tracking figures from Colmar Brunton were equally impressive, with the brand’s key measure “is for sporty people” increased from 35% to 48% (against All People 18-34). And, it proved that there is life beyond the All Blacks in rugby mad New Zealand!

Creative Execution

Mizone’s communication platform is a celebration of being “in the zone” – a phrase used by sports commentators and players to describe an outstanding sports performance regarded as being beyond what would be considered normal. As the home of live sport in New Zealand, we approached Sky TV with our idea. We took actual footage from live sports matches and re-packaged this as content for our “Mizone: In the Zone” messages. These unique brand messages ran immediately following the end of the live match the content was taken from, and included live voiceovers from the match broadcast commentators, describing the action and explaining why it was worthy of being a “Mizone Moment”. The production team then edited the footage from different camera angles in an effort to bring the Mizone Moment to life for the viewer.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Nielsen research confirmed that 1 in 4 Kiwi males aged 18-34 who drink sports drinks “are passionate about sport but do not play a lot of sport”. We wanted to talk to this high consumption group for whom watching, rather than playing sport is a favourite pastime. Further Nielsen research identified rugby, soccer, rugby league and basketball as the most popular sports for our target. Unfortunately, our #1 competitor had rugby locked away, thanks to their multi-million dollar sponsorship of the mighty All Blacks. And, we didn’t have anywhere near the kind of money that would be needed to secure either a team or a broadcast sponsorship. The solution we arrived at was to create a live-to-air “Mizone: In the Zone” segment that ran immediately following the completion of the live coverage of New Zealand’s most popular local soccer, basketball and rugby league teams.