The Campaign

We decided to take Gaytime out of supermarket and convenience store freezers and into the world, with a unique concept that celebrated one of the ice cream’s most loved elements 'the Golden Gaytime vanilla crumb'. Firstly, take the much loved vanilla crumb, and put it ‘on steroids’ with five ridiculous but delicious new Gaytimes, each with their own unique crumb. We then gave them utterly silly names to grab media attention whilst aligning with the Streets ice cream creative platform of ‘Goodbye Serious’ •Unicorn Breath; vanilla crumb, musk sticks, strawberry hard candy, popping candy, edible glitter •Crumb Choc Millionaire; chocolate crumb, smashed potato crisps, desiccated coconut, 100s & 1000s, edible glitter •Chocopalooza; chocolate crumb, lolly bananas, 100s & 1000s •Golden Chief’s Salty Gaytime; vanilla crumb, pretzel bits, salted caramel drizzle •The OG-G – with extra vanilla crumb To further excite media, we created Golden Gaytime Crumbs in a tin.

Execution

Four days prior to the Sydney pop-up opening, we teased media under embargo with the ‘biggest Gaytime news ever’, and on social via our ‘Crumbassador’, Jesse James McElroy (world’s biggest Gaytime fan) before revealing the Crumb Shed concept and ice cream imagery. The media response was incredible and we already had multiple stories secured with key media in a few hours. Over the next few days, the coverage built and built online, fuelling a massive social media buzz and in the first hour of opening, we had a queue snaking down the street. This was repeated in Melbourne which opened two days later. To maintain momentum, we jumped on Sydney’s hottest day of the summer, deciding to run an ‘Hour of Power’ two weeks after opening. With the offer of free ice cream, media jumped on the story and ensuring widespread coverage and a giant queue yet again.

Media Outputs: • 213 pieces of coverage (85 online news, 92 media social posts) (KPI of 52 pieces) • Coverage secured with all key identified media targets • 84 million opportunities to see (KPI of 3.5 million) • Over 33,000 shares from media sites • 49,000 organic social media likes • 3,100 organic social media shares • 17,400 organic social media comments • Over 920,000 views of social media video • 100% positive tone across media coverage • 100% inclusion of imagery (almost all from assets created) • Bulk of media coverage were full articles with in-depth coverage of concept, flavours and key messages • In 38 days, we sold 59,211 ice creams (and tins), or 1,558 a day (KPI of 800 per day) Business Outcomes • Gaytime and Streets cut through the clutter with the Crumb Shed dominating category conversation in the week of launch • Despite 23 ice creams launching over summer and cooler weather than the same time last year, the huge hype around Gaytime Crumb Shed contributed to Streets delivering a 4.4% increase in penetration on last year across its four major brands and a 6% increase in sales • Even with unaided awareness for Gaytime being quite high, the Crumb Shed news made Gaytime top of mind with consumers at a key sales period

The Situation

A bespoke pop-up concept reinvented a classic Australian ice cream in a way that appealed to Aussies’ latent brand love and sparked fantastic media results. Critical to its success was creating unique assets that stayed true to the brand but took it in a crazy direction that had cut-through with media in a very crowded category at the noisiest, but most important time of year. It shows an understanding of how without ‘new news’, crafting not only a compelling story, but a ‘product’ that sparks talkable, shareable content and conversations can drive success.

The Strategy

The target audience for Gaytime is broad (hungry people 15-50 years old) but to position Gaytime as the cool snack for summer and to maximise talkability and shareability, we honed in on a younger demographic as our primary focus. This was reflected in our media targets with a heavy emphasis on online and youth media to drive hype through their strong social channels. To maximize buzz, our strategy was to reveal the Crumb Shed at the last minute via online channels. We faced a challenge though as we had no physical product to sample until the pop-up opened. Our solution was to commission a highly stylised product shoot of our ice creams to create imagery that ‘jumps off the screen’ in any coverage and be hugely shareable. The truth would be in the tasting, so needed to invite media and influencers for a preview just prior to each pop-up opening.