Advertising Campaign of Evian: Rollerbabies - Case Study Example

ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN OF EVIAN: ROLLERBABIES Introduction The Roller babies’ advertisement campaign by Evian was a strategic move that was mostly implemented to reclaim the lost glory that the brand previously enjoyed in France and Europe at large. The campaign was developed with a number of objectives that it was supposed to meet in line with rejuvenating the vigour that Evian used to enjoy among the consumers in the market. To begin with Roller Babies’ was intended to transform Evian into a worldwide brand with a consistent market territory in that it should enable the brand to have a particular share of the market to be comprised of its loyal consumers (Jarboe, 2012). Relatively, the campaign was also aimed at strengthening the equity of Evian by enhancing its emotional appeal through the use of babies in the advertisement to reconnect in a more binding manner with its clientele. Conversely, the ad was meant to create a global buzz on the internet through the utilization of a limited budget to restore the brand’s image to its previous top spot. The international image for Evian had significantly deteriorated over time, thus the campaign was utilized as a tool strengthen the brand preference among the customers, as well as boost the overall brand value among its target market (Advertising Association et al., 1983). 2. Company background DANONE is a manufacturing company based in France that mainly specializes in the production of natural mineral water. The company specializes in premium natural water by emphasizing on quality and stylishness but in return the customers have to pay premium prices to obtain its products. Evian as a brand is founded on four main pillar that are stylishness, availability, iconicity and originality. The company prides itself of manufacturing original water from the French Alps making it iconic for consumers to choose the brand given the herald nature of the French Alps. Relatively, DANONE packages its products in a stylish look making them be more appealing to the target market and most especially the youth. The elegant look is complimented by the idea of Evian injecting youthfulness to its consumers thus refreshing their lives (Jarboe, 2012). The idea tends to resonate with many people thus inducing them to purchase the product. As a premium product Evian is priced at 300% more than other conventional mineral water products thus the company has been facing difficulties in justifying the cost to its clients and thus it needed a campaign that would assist it in achieving the same. Despite the iconicity of Evian, it faces fierce competition from other market rivals with the likes of Vittel, Volvic, Buxton just to name but a few. A majority of the competitors has implemented a low-cost strategy thus jeopardizing the efforts to Evian to market its premium natural water (Codita, 2011). 3. The advertising campaign 3.1 Overview The natural mineral water in Europe was under pressure to a number of factors. The credit crunch that had hit the world had impacted negatively on the consumers’ purchasing power. Sustainability issues also contributed to the pressure mounted by companies such as DANONE since the authorities stipulated strict sustainability regulations that had to be adhered to thus increasing pressure on the operations of the firms. Private labels and low price competitors also brought market dynamism that threatened the existence of older brands such as Evian and thus it was difficult for them to maintain a market edge given fierce pressure from other players. Evian is a premium product in Europe that has been in the market for a considerable period thus the emergence of private labels and low cost competitors was an imminent threat to its premium prices since it has to be increasingly under pressure to justify the high cost of its products since customers had to pay approximately 300% more than what other brands charged (Nahai, 2012) Given the fact that Evian mineral water was sold in a number of European countries, the company faced the problem of inconsistencies in the manner in which it would communicate with its potential clients across the market divide since each country had its own techniques for executing communication. Thus, Evian needed a substantial media campaign that would rejuvenate the presence of the brand among its customers through an advertisement campaign elaborate enough to amaze the entire world. It is under this pretext that the Roller Babies’ publication was conceived with the primary objective of ensuring Evian regains its initial top position in the market as a premium product (Tyagi and Kumar, 2004). 3.2 Objectives The Roller babies’ advertisement was a multi-faceted campaign that was created to fulfil a number of objectives for Evian both in France and Europe at large. Some of the goals of the advert are elaborate as follows. Due to the increasing pressure that Evian was experiencing in the market Roller Babies’ was meant to create an international event at a low cost that would reincarnate Evian back to its previous status as the preferred natural water brand of choice. The product was experiencing low sales volume in Europe and thus an urgent measure had to be undertaken that would turn around those events to ensure Evian is back at the forefront but then under a limited budget (Codita, 2011). The brand had utilized babies in some of its previous advertisement but this time round the intention was to strengthen the equity of Evian by spreading some kind of emotional appeal to its clientele thus enhance a reconnection with its customer to induce brand loyalty amongst them once more. Essentially, it was a mechanism to strengthen the bond between the brand and its customers due to the unprecedented events that had occurred in the market that threatened to dent the perfect relationship that previously existed. The Roller babies’ campaign was meant to be launched on the internet to create a global appeal thus turn Evian into a global brand away from the conventional regional tag that it used to hold exclusively for the European market (Charleson, 2013). Evian as a brand was facing numerous market pressures especially from competitors who came up with low price strategy to counter its premium products. Some of its customers had not been convinced enough of why they had to pay more yet there were other alternative products that charged a far much less price. The campaign was meant to appeal to such group of consumers to increase the viability of Evian being the preferred brand despite its premium rates. Furthermore, the use of Roller Babies’ was intentionally meant to create a global media buzz around Evian to raise the awareness of the brand amongst a wide audience at the same time maximizing the business impact that comes with such unfolding (Nalty, 2010) 3.3 Target market The Evian brand is based on the slogan ‘Live Young’ however, that does not mean the products are only targeted to the young people. It is a slogan that tends to bring out the power of the brand in that after consuming it the customers’ energies will be rejuvenated to regain youthful spirits. The campaign was fashioned in a multi-facet manner with a wide range of target market categories. The primary target market for Roller babies was the internet users. Previously, the company has been running numerous advertisements on television and other print media platforms but had not indulged in the internet community (Burcher, 2012) The Roller babies’ campaign exclusively targeted the internet users since the video would be launched on YouTube with online publicity being conducted in popular blogs and Facebook. It was perceived that the moment the video is positively received online it will eventually go viral and thus reach target market across the world. To be precise Evian is a premium product its high cost is thus meant to cater for the wealthy people in the society who are ready to pay more for quality goods. The youth was yet again the target group for the advertising as they comprise a significant percentage of the online community. The young people love stylish, and trendy products and Evian meets all those aspects thus making it easy to resonate with them. Again by utilizing the online platform the advert would achieve in meeting the youth since they are the ones that frequent social sites like Facebook and YouTube. The fact that the video went viral ensured that consumers around the world got to know of the product thus increasing the global awareness of the products by appealing to the international market (Nahai, 2012) 3.4 Message strategy The message in the Roller Babies’ was designed in a creative yet appealing manner to overcome the cost constraints that the company was facing and at the same time communication barriers in other countries. Priority was emphasized on a creative idea of babies dancing to hip hop music in roller skaters. Conventionally, that is an extraordinary concept that will likely pull anybody’s attention. That was the first objective of the message strategy of the advert, but then seeking care was not all that the campaign was developed to achieve there is much more (Tyagi and Kumar, 2004). The Roller babies’ concept was both creative and entertaining at the same time. Thus, some people would just watch the video due to their love for hip hop music or rather dancing but in the end they will comprehend the fact that Evian is the premium natural drinking water that is stylish and rejuvenates people’s health. Conversely, the message creativity twist can be elaborated further by analyzing the use of babies in the advert. Ideally, children symbolize the begging of life or rather life at its perfect stage whereby one has no health issues, and everything seems to go on right. Thus, the babies dancing on roller skates can be associated with Evian in the sense that it is that natural water that is pure and fit for children’s consumption. Most of these drinking water are ridden with too many minerals thus making them unfit for children (Cooper, 2006). Again, the commercial was not streamlined with the marketing aspect as the core objective but also entertain its audience. The statistics indicate that the video received accumulative views totalling to one hundred and fifty-five million with a million more views being achieved daily. It implies that the entertainment in the video makes people who had encountered the video to keep watching it again and again thus passing the message more efficiently. The nature in which the video was fashioned made it difficult for anyone to ignore watching it once he/she came across it. Additionally, it was imperative that due to the fun that was inclined in the dancing a significant percentage of the people who watched the video shared it within their circles thus helping to go viral on the internet (Cholle, 2012). 3.5 Media Mix In the case of Roller Babies,’ the media mix that the company implemented was rather different from the standard since the advertisement was entirely launched on the digital platform away from the conventional television and print media. Before a firm chooses its media mix, there are a number of factors that are being considered to ensure efficiency and success of the marketing (Jarboe, 2012). The number of people who access social sites is far much significant as compared to the one that has access to television. Relatively, through the digital platform the company was able to reach a new target market 95% of which had not seen the advert previously on television. The cost and flexibility of media channel were other elements that were considered before the media mix for the advertisement was selected (Scott, 2011). The company had a limited financial budget for this exercise yet it wanted to get the best response out of it. In such a scenario, the media mix that would be viable was one that would fit for the small budget as well as command a significant effect on the audience. The choice of cinema, television and digital was quite favourable since the video would be premiered at the theatre and then launched on the digital platform before being run on television. The digital platform would serve the global audience as people from any country can access YouTube hence expanding the market reach (Babinet, 2008) According to the consistency theory an advertisement will only become viable if it is consistent in the sense that is whatever it advocated in the first advert was accomplished them consumers will most likely be enticed into whatever it is advocating next. The Evian babies’ advertisement had been in existence for the past ten years; consequently the company has also been delivering quality drinking water to its customers over years (Tyagi and Kumar, 2004). The fact that Roller babies’ decided to use the trade mark children as its main elements resonated well with the customers as they are used to kids in Evian’s advertisement. Thus, it was prudent that a considerable number of customers would want to watch the video since the past experience they have had with such kind of adverts has been impressive (Shah and DSouza, 009). Each of the media platforms that were selected had a particular objective that they ought to have achieved as far as the advertisement was concerned. For instance, television was utilized to amplify the aggression of the Roller Babies’ campaign in nations that can afford it given its costly nature. Thus television alone would not have achieved the objectives of the advertisement in totality on its own. The digital platform was quite phenomenon for this particular operation since it appealed to a new target market that had not been previously addressed by the other mediums since approximately 95% of the people who viewed the video online had not accessed it via television. The firm was set to leverage from the internet buzz that would accompany the online deployment of the video and transform it into a mechanism for enhancing the brand visibility in markets where it had low brand presence. Cinema was to act as the stepping stone to set the mood for the video and to redefine the entire campaign as an entertaining endeavour to bring in more followers that would later be transformed into fans (Tyagi and Kumar, 2004). 3.6 Media scheduling and budgets Scheduling of the campaign was done in a rather tactical manner to accommodate both the effectiveness of the advertisement as well as the limited budget that was available. The entire campaign was supposed to cost a maximum of five million Euros and thus all marketing activities had to be squeezed within that monetary figure. On scheduling the advertisement was premiered at the cinema complete with behind the scene and star interviews which were followed by television commercials (Babinet, 2008) The success of the campaign can be attributed to the digital platform since it is from this medium that video got multiple airplay from various viewers across the world making it viral and efficiently passing the message to the target market. It is estimated that the Roller Babies’ video received one hundred and fifty-five million views with an additional million views being accumulated daily to this date. That kind of repetition works correctly for advertisement since the persuasive power tends to increase with each time a potential client comes to the video (Czinkota and Ronkainen, 2007) 4. Results The campaign was indeed impressive since it posted numerous positive dimensions as far as Evian is concerned. The advertisement generated an overall positive visibility for the product as it enhanced the media awareness significantly. Brand preference and likeness of Evian improved by about 20-25% based on the statistics from Nielsen. The brand received a boost on its personal relations with the customers as it garnered close to 102 million views in all campaign content on the internet. A significant percent of the review on the digital platforms were active further boosting the image of the brand among the people. The advert set new records in the commercial circles since it was documented in the Guinness world Book of Records as the most viewed advert as of November 2009 with 155 million views on the videos on YouTube. The Times Magazine, as well as The Wall Street Journal, ranked the advert as a number one commercial for that particular year. Similarly, through the advert Evian was able to penetrate new markets as statistics indicate that 95% of the online viewers had not viewed the advert on television thus introducing the brand to a new market segment (Codita, 2011). Evian’s brand equity received a relevant boost in all its aspects thus increasing the perceived value of the brand as well as brand preference among the consumers hence justifying the premium prices that the firm charges. Finally, the advertisement campaign led to an overall 7% increase in sales volume in France with an expansion in the brand’s market share in the UK surging to 28% thus making Evian the dominant brand in that market (Babinet, 2008) 5. Conclusion The Roller babies’ campaign was very impressive right from the manner in which it was implemented together with the effects that it made. It was able to reposition the Evian brand to its former position in the market as well as able to convince again the consumers the reason for the premium prices. In a nutshell, the campaign was a success, and it achieved the objectives that were set though its budget was limited. Read More