STYLE RELAY

TitleSTYLE RELAY
BrandRED BULL
Product / ServiceRED BULL
CategoryE03. Innovative Use of Social or Community
EntrantGEOMETRY GLOBAL Tokyo, JAPAN
Idea Creation GEOMETRY GLOBAL Tokyo, JAPAN
Production THINKR Tokyo, JAPAN

Credits

Name Company Position
Fumitaka Takano Geometry Global Japan Executive Creative Director
Yasushi Arikawa Geometry Global Japan Creative Director
Hiroyuki Furuta Geometry Global Japan Art Director
Kazunao Fujiwara Geometry Global Japan Designer
Iori Hayakawa Geometry Global Japan Designer
Hiroki Hibi Geometry Global Japan Senior Account Manager
Koki Yuyama Geometry Global Japan Account Executive
Shinichi Kuwabara THINKR Producer
Ryo Kato THINKR Producer
Akira Shimazu Freelance Photographer/Videographer
Akihiro Ishiguro Red Bull Japan Culture Marketing Specialist

Background

Tapping into youth culture can be a treacherous challenge for a brand, as a missed step will have dire consequences. For Red Bull to make a connection with a millennial audience, which was already turning toward other brands like Monster, this was doubly treacherous—yet had to be taken on. The battleground for this campaign was to be social media. Here we helped Red Bull take the bold step of giving ownership of the campaign to our young audience. We connected through their passion for dance and created a fun way for them to share their moves and challenge others to do the same. Red Bull created a platform for young street dance fans to engage with their idols, which increased brand relevance among the younger generation; engaging 50% of the 6MM dance community across Japan.

Describe the creative idea

Japan’s dance culture has a distinct sense of inclusivity and togetherness within its dance tribes. Hence confrontational head-to-head battles typical to global street dance competitions wouldn’t resonate. Moreover dance groups are fragmented by genre, making it difficult to bring different styles together to compete. To land Red Bull’s global “Dance Your Style” property, we needed to give it a local twist, and created a digital dance relay. Instead of head-to-head battles, we created something supportive yet still with an element of challenge for all, leveraging influencers’ cross-genre connections. In so doing, our audience were made to feel part of a big effort to share their collective passion. In one stroke Red Bull provided a platform for performance through a medium that gave our dancer audience the space to give their best. Dancers posted their original moves and choreography within our Instagram campaign enabling sharing that transcended their immediate community.

Describe the strategy

As a growth opportunity for the brand, we identified a significant audience within the youth market: dancers, of which there are 6MM in Japan. And specifically for the younger among them, street dancing is the driving force of innovation, excitement, and energy–perfect for Red Bull. In this case “Red Bull Gives You Wings” translated to an expression of dance style through social media. The bond in dance teams were strong across Japan so we knew there was already connectivity we could leverage. A paradox exists however in that while dancers have a desire to feel part of a larger community they are hesitant to share widely their dancing performances–preferring instead to record them privately. So for social media sharing and campaign engagement take off, our idea had to provide a compelling reason to participate.

Describe the execution

Dance Relay kicked off with an announcement and challenge from world champion KENZO, a renowned Japanese dancer and part of the Red Bull Street Dancing team. With KENZO contributing to the creation of initial buzz, and additional Red Bull Team Dancers contributing to the challenge, the connection between Red Bull and dance culture was accelerated. The Dance Relay campaign spread fast among the dancers as they received, accepted, then passed on the challenge to show off their style. To help accelerate the effort we enabled dancers to pass the challenge to multiple people at the same time; expanding the campaign from one dance community to another. To provide added incentive a prize draw was established to award a ticket-for-two to watch Red Bull Dance Your Style World Final in Paris.

List the results

More than 5000 videos (a significant amount considering a typical successful campaign in Japan has 500) were posted during the campaign, creating high reach for Red Bull amongst our target audience of 3.2MM. All from organic efforts and no paid media support. The overall result gave clear indication of the way forward in engaging new audiences for Red Bull in the fight for growth in this competitive category.

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