The Brief

Our brief: Affect behaviour change by creating a piece of content that would facilitate interaction between the younger half of our target audience (men 18-34) and SOLO for the purposes of making the brand more relevant to them. Our strategy: Capitalize on the growing pre-Olympic excitement in a way that was relevant for SOLO and further reinforced our brand’s positioning. The catch? We needed to execute our idea within a total budget of $5000 (media and production) and avoid mention of the Olympics, London 2012 or ‘Go for Gold’.

Creative Execution

SOLO man is an iconic brand character loved not only for the earnestness with which he approached countless unlikely situations throughout 80s advertising, but for his signature moustache, yellow singlet and kayak which is finding favour amongst a ‘new’ generation of SOLO drinkers with whom he has retro cache. Because of this, the relevance to the Australian Olympic kayak team seemed obvious: They wear (green and) gold. SOLO man wears gold. They are about kayaking greatness. SOLO man is best known for his kayaking prowess. The brand equity parallels were uncanny. The only thing missing was the mo’s.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

The obvious challenge, was linking SOLO with the Olympics. We were surprised to learn that the Australian Kayak team had never won gold in the white water event. Their shortcomings were in stark contrast to the heroics of SOLO man whose 80s advertising kayaking prowess remains ‘legendary’. The only explanation was SOLO Man’s moustache. Our solution was a Facebook campaign that encouraged the Australian kayak team to ‘grow for gold’. In terms of objectives, we benchmarked success against the reach figures of traditional channels print (500,000 people 18+) and radio (180,000 people 14+).

Results

Within 5 days, 1500 people within our target audience had signed our petition, and our Facebook page saw a 10% uplift in target audience fans. After 10 days, we had reached 250,000 people, and after 3 weeks, had gained access to a network of 6.8M people (63% of the Australian Facebook population). Lastly, we attracted the support of influential Twitterers Jack Riewoldt (28,018 followers), Corinne Grant (23,989) and Gina Schreck (114, 432). Although their endorsement can’t be quantified, it will have undoubtedly have helped us achieve our key marketing objective of engaging young adults in the brand.