NEW ZEALAND MEETS JAPAN

Silver Spike

Case Film

Presentation Image

TitleNEW ZEALAND MEETS JAPAN
BrandLION
Product / ServiceTOKYO DRY
CategoryA04. Use of Licensed or Adapted Music
EntrantDDB NEW ZEALAND Auckland, NEW ZEALAND
Idea Creation DDB NEW ZEALAND Auckland, NEW ZEALAND
Media Placement ZENITH Auckland, NEW ZEALAND
PR THE PR SHOP Grey Lynn, NEW ZEALAND
Production GOODOIL FILMS Auckland, NEW ZEALAND
Additional Company LION Auckland, NEW ZEALAND

Credits

Name Company Position
Damon Stapleton DDB Group New Zealand Regional Chief Creative Officer
Shane Bradnick DDB Group New Zealand Executive Creative Director
James Conner DDB Group New Zealand Creative Director
Christie Cooper DDB Group New Zealand Creative Director
Jenny Travers DDB Group New Zealand Business Partner
Michael Doolan DDB Group New Zealand Senior Business Manager
Rupert Price DDB Group New Zealand Chief Strategy Officer
Judy Thompson DDB Group New Zealand Executive Producer
Samantha Royal DDB Group New Zealand Senior TV Producer
Mark Foster Goodoil Executive Producer
George Mackenzie Goodoil Business Director
Joe Kefali Goodoil Director
Andrew Mclean Goodoil Producer
Peter Grasse Mr Positive Line Producer
Germain McMicking Goodoil DOP Lighting Cameraman
Mark Burnett The Editors Offline Editor
Dave Gibson Goodoil Colourist
Stu Bedford The Machine Room Online
Jonathan Mihaljevich Franklin Road Music Licensing
Cam Ballantyne Beatworms Music Arranger/Producer

Why is this work relevant for for Music?

Music is intrinsically linked to a country's national identity and nothing goes with beer more than a great song. So, what could be a better way to advertise a beer that combines two different cultures, than with music that does the same? Steinlager Tokyo Dry combines New Zealand ingredients with Japanese brewing mastery. So, we advertised it by taking an iconic New Zealand song, Slice of Heaven, and remaking it with Japanese musicians. Merging New Zealand and Japan to get a fresher take on our old kiwi classic. Just like Steinlager did when they made Tokyo Dry.

Background

Steinlager is New Zealand's national beer. But they were seeing a worrying trend emerge as Kiwis in their 20s moved away from traditional NZ brands. For these young Kiwis, the classic, iconic Steinlager was a little bit old fashioned and uncool. With a quarter of the population living overseas and immigrants now making up another quarter of our demographic, NZ culture has changed. More and more, young Kiwis were looking overseas for inspiration and rejecting anything that represents 'old New Zealand' as they strive to appear more worldly. It was from this insight that Steinlager Tokyo Dry was born. A beer made from NZ ingredients and Japanese brewing mastery. Steinlager wanted to advertise this Japanese inspired beer without losing their NZ heritage, So we followed the format of Tokyo Dry by taking another iconic New Zealand classic and remaking it with Japanese masters of a different kind.

Describe the creative idea

With Steinlager Tokyo Dry Steinlager showed Kiwi's what's possible when New Zealand meets Japan. So we created a song and music video that does the same. To represent the New Zealand side of Tokyo Dry and our iconic Kiwi classic - Steinlager, We used another well-loved New Zealand classic ‘Slice of Heaven’ by Dave Dobbyn and Herbs. Pegged as NZs unofficial National Anthem, it's a song that every Kiwi knows and loves. Now, more than 20 years after it first appeared in the charts it was perfectly poised for an update to make it relevant to a whole new generation of young Kiwis. Then, to represent the Japanese side of Tokyo Dry, we collaborated with a range of Japanese musicians to remake Slice of Heaven. Each musician put their spin on the track, creating a true cultural mash-up.

Describe the strategy

We needed to reach saavy young New Zealanders who rejected anything that looked like advertising so instead of treating the release of the song as a traditional advertising campaign, we treated it like any other song release with a music video, street posters, merchandise, PR and a social campaign – all intended to generate substantial hype and talkability around Tokyo Dry. Because the song is such a precious part of New Zealand culture we knew doing anything with it was risky. So on launch day we asked Dave Dobbyn (the original singer and New Zealand's most famous musician) to release a video on his social pages showing him watching the music video for the first time, his genuine, enthusiastic reaction went a long way to making sure there were no negative comments. Dave Dobbyn also took part in several radio interviews to talk about the campaign (and the beer).

Describe the execution

The night before the launch, the countries most watched news show - Seven Sharp, played an exclusive first look at the music video. Then the next morning our biggest Newspaper, The NZ Herald ran a story about the song and shared the music video online as well on their social pages. Throughout the day radio DJs played and talked about the song and on social, Dave Dobbyn shared a video of himself watching the music video, he was pretty excited about the whole thing! Over the next few days, all the Japanese musicians and the countries most popular radio stations also shared the music video on social. The song was released on Spotify and iTunes and was accompanied by street posters, merchandise giveaways on social and cutdowns that appeared on TV and cinema.

Describe the outcome

Business Results Sales went up 44% in volume and 28% in value. Not only is the brand increasing penetration, it continues to bring new drinkers into the category. Communications Results Our version of ‘slice of heaven’ has earnt it’s own place in New Zealand culture. The whole campaign gained a reach of 4,915,813 (and New Zealand has a population of only 4.8 million). And a total earned media value of This online launch video alone gained: 472,229 Film Video completions (+77% exceeded delivery against benchmarks) 1,720,538 unique kiwis 18+ reached on social 557,479 engagements with social content with 602 shares

Links

Video URL