Oasis and the New Honesty Marketing Campaign

I've been amused lately by the new Oasis campaign. If you haven't seen any of the latest campaign, the main tagline is "It's Summer.  You're thirsty. We've got sales targets".

Honesty Marketing at it's finest

Well, do they say honesty is the best policy, but is it likely to work?

The history of Oasis is a little muddled.  It was originally launched in 1966 by Volvic under the name 'Pulse', but poor sales led to its rebrand as 'Oasis' in 1990.  Its history then gets a little complicated, but in essence it was acquired by the then Cadburys-Schweppes who launched it into the UK in 1995. It was then acquired by Coca Cola Enterprises in 2005 along with a number of other European drinks brands.

Oasis has been positioning itself as a "healthier soft drink" solidly for 20 something adults who are happy to pay premium prices for a relatively standard purchase - in this case, squash from concentrate. By suggesting itself as an alternative to water rather than something like Coke, it links the brand to healthy options and positions itself firmly in the health category.

They also have access to a lot of the Coca Cola distribution network; if somewhere sells Coke, they are likely to sell Oasis and include it in their deals.

There were product problems that needed fixing when CCE acquired it: Oasis used to have a heavy sugar content which meant it failed originally as a healthy option.  This was eventually sorted by reconfiguring the recipes, but there were several false starts on the way with low calorie versions such as 'Fusion', 'Lights' and 'Extra Lights' which, despite over £3m launch spend in marketing, were withdrawn quickly afterwards due to bad sales.

So far, so good.

However, Oasis does have a problem in that it's never quite seemed to manage to fix its brand image

The ill-fated and pulled Cactus Kid campaign

in a clear and coherent fashion, despite obvious heavy investment from CCE. Numerous advertising campaigns have been and gone with varying levels of success and memorability.  Do you remember the "Chug it?" adverts, the first after CCE took over?  They pretty much sank without a trace, so it's not that likely.  Or the 'Cactus Kid' campaign the year after, which had a wide multi-media approach including adverts, videos, websites and a whole fake mythos, which was abruptly pulled after complaints to the ASA that it encouraged children to drink Oasis instead of water?  There have been more, but all fairly without impact.

Still, CCE isn't going to abandon Oasis to its fate.  The global soft drinks business is falling as people look for healthier options; soda consumption globally is now equivalent to what it was in 1986 having been falling steadily since 2005.  In additional, Coca Cola has been targeted specifically by health groups such as the CSPI in Amercia (the Center for Science in the Public Health) partly due to its high profile and market share.  To counterbalance, CCE has been adding non-soda companies to its portfolio in the last 7 years to try and diversify their risk, including investing in 5 smaller companies and buying 3 more.  It owns companies like Glaceau (who make SmartWater), Fuze tea, Zico coconut water and Honest Organic tea.  Even the flagship brand itself is feeling the pressure by releasing new formulations such as Coke Life which replaces sugar with sevia, although this still hasn't been launched in the US to date.

Oasis, as a brand in the right place at the right time is a potential goldmine, if they can just get the right messaging.

The latest campaign has been created by 'The Corner' agency, and have gone into what is called 'insane honesty marketing' and 'humanised marketing' (thanks to Cuco Creative for the terms and some of the info in the next couple of paragraphs). It's a big change from some of the glitz and style that they've delivered previously.

This shift is designed to appeal to millennials; i.e. people who reached adulthood around 2000, so will now be in their 30s and who value transparency and honesty in the communications from big brands rather than slick presentations. So Oasis are changing their emphasis slightly from 20s to 30s: not something they would do lightly and without a lot of consumer research. The Pioneers of this sort of thing were companies like Innocent with their smoothies and vegetable pots. It's also notable in companies that actively engage in social media, especially those that have a distinct personality and human voice.

The ultimate payoff of this strategy is trust: if a brand is willing (or at least seen as being willing) to be open about their weaknesses, then when they talk about their strengths, the listener is far more likely to believe them.  It's a known phenomenon known as the Halo Effect.

The likelihood is that this campaign will be more successful than their previous ones, and this time they are looking at a segment with more disposable income and more health-consciousness.  They are also more likely to have children, and so be under more social pressure to provide healthy options for lunches and outings. My guess is that the next push is likely to focus on health benefits, which will be more believed than previous claims after this initial bout of honesty.  So my feeling is that yes, it will work, as long as they can maintain whatever claims they make and continue with the human messaging.

I'll be interested to see how it goes!


     

On Awards and the Importance of Localisation

Last month, the UK Team won an Internal Marketing Award (First Runner-Up) for a campaign that I ran at the end of last year.

Presenting the elevator pitch of the relevant UK
Campaign at the Awards Dinner.  There was a black and white
theme: I don't usually dress in monochrome!

It was an interesting process.  Each of our corporate offices were allowed to enter up to two marketing projects which we felt were particularly noteworthy from the last calendar year.  Submissions had to include information on strategic relevance, target markets, implementation, ROI (both qualitative and quantitative) and anything else particularly relevant.  Each marketing team in each country reviewed the circulated submissions and ranked them based on a number of specified criteria, a little like the Eurovision Song Contest.

The idea is for the global business to exhibit some of the best ideas with the aim of consideration for implementation elsewhere, as well as to give a level of recognition for the efforts involved over the past year.

The very different approaches showcased the unique properties of each country's markets.  I suspect this was also reflected in the scoring as well as different countries will have scored partly based on personal experience, and that in many cases the same project could have wildly differing marks.

Looking at the different projects and assessing whether or not we could use them in our own markets highlighted one of the key considerations in any global company: the importance of localisation.  Many of the projects were extremely good, yet would not be applicable in the current form to other territories.

Often, large global companies will create campaigns to be used in their subsidiaries.  This is important as it ensures brand continuity, clear consistent messaging and cuts down on the work needed on a local level.  However, no campaign should ever just be adopted without a level of analysis and evaluation for appropriateness against the target audience.  Culture, habits, phrases, communication and channels will all need to be checked.  In top down campaigns, localisation is often perceived as a threat to the brand; a dilution which causes damage.  However, without the flexibility to localise, most campaigns are dead in the water.  Brands need to be able to be recognisable whilst still meeting the different needs of the segments they are trying to reach.    

Badly localised adverts are common, especially on television.  Beyond bad dubbing and using obviously non-local locations, there can be inherent cultural issues.  Proctor & Gamble, who are generally fairly savvy, got it very wrong when they used an American advert in Japan which showed a husband walking in on his wife bathing and touching her.  Whilst in the US this was seen as sweet and a depiction of married intimacy, in Japan it was viewed as an invasion of privacy and was felt to be in very poor taste, depicting a bad marriage due to the lack of respect being demonstrated.

Communication channels too can be overlooked: a basic issue for any global social media campaign is that both Facebook and Twitter are currently banned in China, and have been since 2009.  Many countries have bans on blanket emails, and opt-in/opt-out countries will have very different approaches to e-Blasts and electronic CRM communications.

Translation/phrasing blunders can happen, and even within the same language localisation can be needed: for example US/UK spelling varies, and extraneous 'u's can be the difference between someone engaging or disengaging on a piece of text.

If you know your segmentation and your targets (your ST of the STP mantra), your campaign has to fit them in all aspects.  And using the indigenous marketing personnel is one of the best ways to do so.

And on that note, I'm off to go and put the Award Certificate somewhere!