Building off the success of "Best Roommate Ever" – the breakthrough collaboration that was a finalist for #YouTubeAd of the Year and was a Google case study for branded content – Brita tapped digital studio Portal A for a new campaign spotlighting its latest water filter product, the Brita Stream.
With the start of a new year, we saw an opportunity to own a key behavioral and cultural moment when millions of consumers were making decisions to live healthier lives. Featuring social media sensation Rudy Mancuso and NBA superstar Stephen Curry, the "New Year, New Me" digital campaign was a perfect fit for the Brita Stream, a water filter that not only promotes a healthy lifestyle but also encourages reducing waste by minimizing bottle consumption. The campaign sought to raise product awareness, increase brand affinity, and drive purchase consideration among young professionals aged 25-40.
The challenge to align creative, talent, production, and strategy around one breakthrough idea required collaborating with a creator whose audience closely aligns with our target demographic. This presented an opportunity for Portal A to develop a big idea that felt authentic to the talent channel, but would also meet the brand objectives and make a huge smash online. Through this approach, we were able to deliver the brand messaging on the scale of a television ad but in a way that audiences actually cared about, engaged with, and shared with their friends.
At the center of the campaign was an epic music video collaboration bringing together two massive stars in their own right – Stephen Curry and Rudy Mancuso.
Key product insights provided by Clorox drove the premise of the campaign: the start of a new year ignites a cultural moment when millions embark on resolutions to focus on living healthier lives. With the endless amount of information provided by the internet, Millennials are more aware and conscious to the environmental issues specifically regarding plastic waste. Keeping this as the north star during the casting and creative development process, Portal A developed a breakthrough concept that would ensure that the piece would resonate with the target audience.
The teams at Clorox and Portal A worked closely to develop a discerning set of casting criteria which focused on overall fit and affinity with the brand and the Brita Stream product. Additional criteria included: a close match between the demographics of the Creator audience and the brand brief; upward trending viewership in the previous 6 months; Creators with the talent and ability to collaborate with a star like Stephen Curry; and the desire and enthusiasm to work together closely to create elevated, premium branded content on their channel.
After extensive vetting of dozens of candidates, Rudy Mancuso was the obvious choice. Creatively, he had the ambitions to collaborate on a concept we had developed. Rudy Mancuso also had the type of show-stopping talent to grab the audience's attention and break through the noise of content online. His avid fan base (with 36m+ followers across his social platforms) sealed the deal.
The collaboration between traditional + YouTube celebrity resulted in content that was able to reach a massive millennial audience in a relatable, entertaining way and aligned with the overall goal to build awareness for a newer, faster Brita product.
Portal A produced 13+ pieces of original content, creating a cohesive multi-platform campaign across Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. The content was distributed across Rudy Mancuso and Stephen Curry's social channels reaching the combined duo's 63.8m+ followers. The distribution strategy included hosting the branded music video on Rudy Mancuso's YouTube channel, :30 spots to promote the music video, custom shorts on Instagram and Facebook to help with social amplification, and a behind-the-scenes video for the avid fans.
The unexpected collaboration of two massive stars created an unmissable Internet moment. We produced 13+ pieces of original content that delivered a total of 34M+ views 2M+ engagements, 25+ press stories, and a top 5 trending video on YouTube. A brand lift study revealed a remarkable increase in product awareness and search for Clorox's "Brita," including a 23.1% lift in product awareness, 30.7% lift in consideration, 4,222% search lift increase for 'Brita'. With over 10 million views on YouTube alone, the video delivered on its promise of using Youtube-native talent and a fresh take on a resolutions video to take the internet by storm.
In part because his social video from the campaign became the most viewed video ever on his social, Stephen Curry and his team later brought us on to produce his original YouTube series, "5 Minutes From Home," a new project he developed to stay close to his fans. His first guest was Rudy Mancuso, and during the episode they organically mentioned the Brita campaign a number of times (5 or so). That video generated another 2.3m views, unpaid by the brand, and demonstrates why working with creators is an amazing investment.
