The Campaign

The music and events space is not as tightly regulated as other entertainment areas such as Television. However, the multi layered rights ownership that any music activation, especially artist tie ins, poses its own limitations and challenges. For Cornetto Ride To RED we were dealing with a wide a spectrum of rights holders from the artist herself and the artiste management, multiple tour promoters, publisher, sync and sub-contracted artist image rights holders through to Sony Music Entertainment. The campaign was further regulated with every creative execution needing sign off by artiste management and the artist herself. For on-ground activations in and around the venues, we were limited by health and safety legislations as well as pre-existing venue sponsorship deals.

Results

Across South East Asia Teens have long been enjoying Cornetto; however with new players successfully entering the category Cornetto had lost its “cool” and year-on-year sales were declining. The brand needed to regain the hearts and mouths of this important audience. Enter Cornetto RED - bringing to life Cornetto's new positioning 'Enjoy the Ride, Love the Ending'. Executed through 3 core ingredients; 1. Taylor Swift’s RED tour to Asia 2. Cornetto Ride to Fame; online and on-ground talent competition where teens were both the stars and judges selecting the opening acts 3. Launch of 3 limited Edition Cornetto’s alongside the brands biggest ever on pack promotion, where every Cornetto feature the RED tour and equaled a chance to win. The campaign kicked off with a personal message from Taylor launching her RED tour and inviting teens to get involved. Her latest hit single “Red” was even the official campaign anthem, featured on all of the video messaging. Once we had them hooked, we launched the RIDE TO FAME contest turning teens into the stars and judges, choosing the act to open up for Taylor Swift’s at her region-wide sellout Red tour. We leveraged established local artists from Sony Music’s network and their social media, blogs and tweets for added interest to draw music fans. We also created immersive and exclusive music content through regional and local editorial partnerships to serving teens the ride of their life at every touch point Thanks to Cornetto, all teens from aspiring acts to avid music lovers enjoyed the Ride and Loved the Ending.

Cornetto teen’s love life; friends, fashion, tech but mostly music. As their most potent passion point, Cornetto aimed to serve teens the ride of their life by creating headline grabbing activations with music and engagement at its heart Cornetto partnered with teen favorite Taylor Swift – bringing her to the region for the very first time. Not only did Cornetto give teens a chance to see Taylor live, they also launched Ride to Fame, a competition where teens entered and selected the act to open on Taylor Swift’s stage and in front of her fans.

By painting the town RED, Cornetto had regained its “cool”, reconnected with teens through their passion of music. More than 1,000 artist’s generated collective content and entries in the competition. Teens flocked in their thousands to the concerts to support and generate over 340,000 votes for their favorite local acts. Cornetto was the talk of the town; with the 400’000 new Facebook fans had helped triple their monthly unique reach leading to a 500% uplift in monthly engagements with over 917 million campaign impressions to date and still counting. Cornetto had successfully differentiated itself; teens were back in love with sales going through the roof. Declining sales had turned into growth; a staggering +26% in Indonesia and over 8% across South East Asia. With close to over 90M cones sold, the Taylor Swift limited edition variant drove a 1/5th of total sales. Cornetto had won back the hearts (and mouths) of these consumers, regained its cool - and made a connection that would last well beyond the final song.