The Brief

V Energy is New Zealand’s leading energy drink with over 50% market share - despite the best intentions of global giant Red Bull. V has such large awareness (98%), that traditional advertising campaigns are irrelevant to its cynical young male (18-24yr) target audience. So rather than push out broad reach ATL advertising, V used its highly engaged Facebook community to invite their friends to participate in their latest campaign. V’s objective was straightforward – engage its social audience to target their friends and recruit new consumers through the game of V Battle Carts!

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

“How to improve the game of golf” – by V Energy 1: Remove everything boring. 2: Realise there’s nothing left but golf carts. 3: Give the carts new suspension, grunty engines and roll cages, disguise them as golf balls, then set them loose on a pristine golf course. 4. The result is V Battle Carts! A socially led campaign that put V fans in the driver’s seat.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

V Energy Facebook fans created 76 Battle Carts events. • Those fans invited 72,918 friends to join them. • And those people helped V Energy reach 1,155,029 Facebook fans (25% of NZ’s total population). • This social reach was larger than the total energy drink audience of NZ (Source: Neilsen) A Facebook fan in a town called Matamata was the winner. The event was so popular that 23% of the town’s population signed up to attend. On average, each person who attended drank almost 8 cans of V Energy! This shows the power of a social community in recruiting more loyal consumers.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

“V Battle Carts” was a social media led campaign where V’s Facebook community competed to host an event where their friends could drive the Battle Carts in a day of lawn-ruining action. Each person invited a minimum of 200 friends to attend. The objective was to use V Energy’s highly engaged social community to recruit others to participate with the brand.