Polar Ice Case Study

• 1. Case Study:How Polar Ice Vodka Echoed through Social Media to Reach Fun Seekers Feb 25 / 2010

2. What well cover today

• Introduction

• Background on Polar Ice Vodka

• Our digital task

• Finding & creating the right digital mix

• Results

• Whats next

3. About Me

• Follow me here:

• twitter.com/phryl

• burningthebacon.com

• linkedin.com/in/phryl

• slideshare.net/phryl

• Phil Barrett (.mobi)

• VP Digital & Mobile

• CMA Digital Council

• Mobile Evangelist

• 360 Marketer

• BSTREET Communications

• Toronto & London, UK

4.

• Speaks to your most valuable consumers

• Travels across all marketing disciplines

• Optimizes your marketing spend

• Drives equity, sales and market share

SmartIdeas TM BSTREET is a marketing communications agency dedicated to creating for your brand. 5. 6. About Polar Ice Vodka

• Like the live music scene in the East, the cosmopolitan cocktail scene in the West, and the gotta be seen dance clubs in our downtown cores, Polar Ice is a true contemporary Canadian vodka.

• Quadruple distilled and triple filtered for a legendary clean, smooth taste, Polar Ice is the largest selling Canadian vodka brand

• Bronze Medal Winner - the Beverage Testing Institute 2008

• Double Gold Medal Winner - the San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2003

7. Background

• BSTREET hired to redevelop visual identity system for the brand in 2008

• Targeting 19-25 funseekers

• Vis had to live across retail, trade, print and online

• No existing website or online presence

8. Our Digital Task

• Establish online consumer position as a brand site / bring to life the PIV identity system that can also support ongoing promotions

• Extend online experience to other social media tools in order to engage fun seekers

• Incorporate unique position as Canadian vodka with specific content to differentiate from other vodka sites

• Create an experience that will create word of mouth (WOM) buzz

9. 10. Finding the right Digital Mix 11. BSTREET Media Mix Philosophy(from last year) 12. 13. Twitter Content Plan

• Weekly content schedule that focused on lifestyle not just product

• Content was pre-loaded weeks in advanced & auto-published using free twitter tools

• • #musicmonday

• • #martinimonday

• • #filmreviewfriday

• • #WhatEverHappenedTo

• • Featured drink recipes

• • Misc quotes, questions, and statements that resonate with the fu seeker

14. 15. Extending to facebook

• Launched facebook fan page at the same time as the PIV website (as opposed to creating a group or Application)

• Site became extension of website & incorporated many of the same design elements

• Strong call to action back to the website

• Product & recipe content also lives on the fan page

• Overall the facebook experience needs to be relevant, timely, and aligned with other channels

16. 17. 18. Other Vodkas on Facebook

• 637 fans

• 2,952 fans

• 897 fans

19. Social Media Summary

• Both channels are proving to be effective in reaching our target demographic in the channel of their choice

• WOM is helping with acceleration of fans

• Small investment in social ads resulted in huge exposure for brand on facebook

20. Website

• Our assignment? Create a brand site that goes beyond what the category has done traditionally by integrating social media extensions into the website experience

21. Our Inspiration 22. Lessons learned from Skittles

• Over 2000% increase in traffic in one week

• Massive social media buzz & word of mouth although much of it was not positive

• Although bold & successful in many ways, they lostALLcontrol of the brand

• They didnt really engage / join the conversation so didnt follow the true spirit of social media

23. More Inspiration 24. The Smart Idea: Syndication vs Stickiness

• Go beyond a traditional flash only brand / promotional website

• Create an EXPERIENCE that will interest fun seekers and

• Engage them in ways they are already familiar with in social media

• Overall create content and experience that will syndicate across multiple channels

25. Make the PIV Experience Social

• The socialscape created for the PIV website will echo tweets from the twitterverse

• • Pre-filtered / formatted tweets with common words (brand attributes, fun seeker attributes) will appear to echo from the landscape and in real-time

• • User can input their own words

• • Link to PIV twitter page

• • This allows us to leverage user generated content and social media while maintaining control of the brand

• • Content can be seeded

• • Content can come from a specific event to correspond with on trade activities

• • Users can enter their own words to change stream

26. Other features

• User can change / choose from ~5 different socialscapes that are specific to regions of Canada

• Fun seeker can change the music loop that starts playing when they land on the website

• Incorporated sharing widgets & easy links to facebook and twitter channels

27. 28. LIVE DEMO 29. Other results 30. 31. Key Insights

• Content is king allocate more to content than programming & design

• Experience that syndicates allows us to engage the target market in the channel of their choice

• Employing our 70 / 20 / 10 digital marketing mix enabled innovation while still delivering a platform that met objectives

• The echo tool resonated with everybody but was too much of an Easter egg

• Facebook was the most cost effective channel and had the most engagement

32. BSTREET Media Mix Philosophy (Updated Jan 2010) 33. WHATS NEXT (live demo) 34. QUESTIONS?