Results and Effectiveness

The V Motion Project delivered significant lifts in consumer engagement and sales. • Website visits increased by 1000% • All content was viewed more than 1.8 million times • Facebook Likes grew 12% • The music track (Can’t Help Myself) reached #1 in the New Zealand Singles Charts, and #1 on the iTunes Electronic Music charts. • While sales increased in measured channels by 13%. The project has also received huge international attention from some of the world’s most creative companies including TED, the Discovery Channel, Microsoft, Warner Bros Music, Disney and Google. The Huffington Post described the project as “the future of dance music”.

Creative Execution

The entire project was documented and released as a series of webisodes on the ‘V’ YouTube channel, website and Facebook page allowing consumers to engage in the journey. Leading youth TV channel U-Live and radio stations George FM and The Edge followed the project from start to finish, including distributing the content we created as well as creating their own. On June 16th, The V Motion Project showcased its new technology with an unexpected live performance in downtown Auckland. The motion artist played the full track with his movements projected onto a 12x30m wall as mind-blowing animations, as the music boomed through huge speaker stacks. The event was covered live on national TV and radio, witnessed & recorded by hundreds of spectators, and uploaded to YouTube and Facebook. We filmed this experience and used the content in TVCs, digital media, additional digital content and finally in a full-length music video.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

In 2012, V Energy drink had just come off the most successful three-year period in its 15-year history. The brand had over 50% market share and was even outselling Coca-Cola in petrol stations. But we noticed our traditional market were moving on, while new young consumer were beginning to see V as less relevant to them. We needed to turn this round and engage this audience like never before. So in April 2012, V assembled a team of technology developers, audio engineers, visual artists, musicians and a leading music producer, and gave them a challenge – to create a piece of music using only the body’s movement. The team hacked Microsoft’s Kinect motion tracking software combining it with audio production software Abelton, to create an instrument that transforms the body’s movement into sounds. We called this team, and their journey, ‘The V Motion Project’.