Party island in the sun. Reviewing the Corona Ibiza campaign
What better way to kick off the first UK campaign for Molson Coors’ Mexican lager brand Corona than Destination Corona Island, a fully-integrated promotional campaign offering the chance to win a trip for four to Corona’s very own island party?
Corona Island involves Corona taking over a part of the Balearic party island, Ibiza. There are flagship Corona Island events and the brand takes over some of the biggest venues Ibiza has to offer – it even has a Corona yacht that docks off the bay. As Adam Azor, senior account director at BD, says: “It’s basically a Corona Party and we have access to the island.”
The brief
Corona Island is the central pillar of BD Network’s promotion, which launched at the end of May 2011. The mechanic looks simple on the surface: but what it is trying to achieve long term for the brand in the UK is the fruit of a huge amount of strategic planning.
The objective is big: create a UK positioning for Corona and achieve saliency. It could be argued that this is a fairly straightforward task, with no campaign comparisons currently in the market for the brand. On the other hand, it could be the chance to do something outstanding for Molson Coors, which recently added the brand to its portfolio. BD has tried to make sure it’s the latter; its response to the brief has seen the agency attempt to cover all bases with this campaign.
Corona’s main competitors are Sol and other premium packaged lagers which include Peroni and Budweiser. Adam Azor says: “The brief wasn’t to come up with an on-pack promotion or win a holiday to Ibiza.” It was much more than that: at the start of the year, Molson Coors entered into a joint venture with Modelo, the brewery in Mexico which produces the beer, which gave them the rights to market and distribute Corona and its supporting products. Azor adds: “The challenge was taking the brand, which is well known internationally, one of the premium packaged lagers in the world, and take it to a level that hasn’t really been done before. In Europe, it has a recognised positioning, but we felt we needed to do something that was relevant to the UK market to give it a fresh start.”
The campaign
Because Corona is an imported beer, the agency could not go on-pack in the on-trade, but BD is not worried about having to rely heavily on Point of Sale. Azor notes: “We are trying to create saliency. So what we are generating by having POS positioning is creating Corona pre-awareness and getting people to engage with the brand.”
BD is not just looking at the surface activity of the promotion; it is aiming to get a better result for the brand long term. The emphasis on digital in the campaign is part of an objective to create an on-going relationship with consumers online via the website, Facebook and through mobile.
The multi-million pound Win a Trip to Corona Island campaign includes on-trade, off-trade, social and digital media and experiential and aims to change purchase behaviour in a big way.
The on-trade activity will be in bars and pubs nationwide. Consumers can buy a bucket of Corona which will include a promotional luggage tag with competition entry for the chance to win a trip to the island for four people, or one of over 4,000 lesser prizes including Corona hoodies, t-shirts or key ring bottle openers. There is also a free prize draw for a guaranteed trip for two to experience the Ibiza closing party in September. Plus, everyone who enters the promotion can access a Corona Island exclusive Hed Kandi playlist, which includes 40 free tracks.
Consumers enter the codes found on the tag using any one of four entry mechanisms – the brand website, mobile site, text to win and via the Corona Facebook page. Azor comments: “We absolutely scrutinised the entry points, and you could argue, why bother with a brand website? But it’s important to note we are dealing with consumers who are going out and it was necessary to maximise entry points. It’s also a safety net, because Facebook is out of our control and if the whole promotion went via Facebook and something went wrong with Facebook our promotion would be over and there would be nothing we could do about it.”
A trade incentive program will run at the same time as the promotion, where bar staff can compete to deliver the fastest serve of the promotional bucket. They will have to fill the bucket with ice, knock the caps off the bottles, add a wedge of lime to all of them, place them in the bucket with all the labels facing forward, place the luggage tag on it and present it to the consumer.
Matt Duffey, senior account executive at BD, says: “Having worked in bars, we know what it’s like; you turn up, do the job, and go home. We wanted to come in with something different from the norm and make the bar staff part of the promotion. It creates a bit of theatre in the bar and competition between the staff and offers them the chance at the same prize as the consumers.”
In order to present this idea to the client, Matt was filmed delivering the perfect serve himself, in a meeting room at BD. Adam Azor says: “The client got it and loved it and we even went on a road show to all the Molson Coors sales teams where Matt showed them how it’s done. It’s a classic push and pull technique to get the people that are implementing the promotion motivated and behind the campaign.”
The two-tiered experiential campaign will include activity across nine cities in the UK, visiting around three to four bars a night. Someone will walk into a bar and lay down a Corona mat and walk out; 30 seconds later people playing bongos enter, the lights go down and classic Ibiza tracks start playing. A performer then steps onto the mat and performs a choreographed dance, teasing the crowd to join him.
Two women, dressed normally, will then join him and start performing a break-dance routine. The brand ambassadors then interact with the crowd to highlight the promotion. In each city there will also be a flagship event, with a big name DJ, performers, artists and ‘Ibiza Angels’ masseuses.
The off-trade is catered for with a text to win promotion to be entered in a weekly prize draw, running for 10 weeks, for the winner and a friend to go to Ibiza. In-store shopper marketing will include a shelf wobbler, barker and A4 poster. Wholesalers will have a chance to win a £1,000 voucher by taking a picture of their Corona display promoting the fact that their off-trade customers could win the trip.
Client-agency relationships
The Molson Coors team is the biggest account team at BD. From concept, the Corona campaign has grown and has developed so many aspects, it was important to build a team to accommodate the growth.
The team consists of Andrew Colyer, client service director, Adam Azor, senior account director, Jennifer Parker, senior account manager, Mairi Murdoch, account manager and Matt Duffey, senior account executive. They have worked very closely with the client, but the project has also touched every other department at BD. The agency only won the brand in January this year, so it has had to produce the campaign in a shorter amount of time compared to traditional schedules.
Kevin Wallace, Molson Coors’ UK brand director for Corona, says: “The fully integrated campaign will offer something new and exciting, and contains a strong digital element, which we know engages with our target consumer.”
What’s next?
Mandeep Masutay, marketing communications partner at Molson Coors, comments: “Normally, whenever you have a point of purchase promotion like this, it’s engaging at the time, but it’s hard to lock consumers in because of the way the mechanic works. This campaign communicates the brand. We feel that BD have started the ongoing journey with consumers and that is really important for us because it is a new brand into the portfolio.”
The team is aware that Corona can be viewed as a summertime drink, so the campaign will feature a second wave of activity. As Promotional Marketing magazine went to press, the campaign had received over 3,000 entries in its first weekend alone.