Rockstar Energy is fuel for the hustler who relentlessly grinds to make their goals a reality—what we call Real Rockstars. The ones who know success doesn’t happen overnight but is a process made possible by hours of heads-down hard work. To celebrate this mentality, alongside the launch of two new Rockstar Pure Zero flavors, we aimed to rally the Real Rockstars with an engaging campaign rooted in innovation called Zero in on the Hustle. Through the campaign, we looked to build an experience that would put all the inspiration fans needed under one roof, motivating our audience to purchase Rockstar and engage with the brand—giving fans the chance to win hustle-centric prizes that would help them zero in on their hustles in a way that felt personalized to them.
We set out to achieve this by developing a custom-built microsite and augmented reality portal dubbed The House of Hustle. We wanted to create a first-of-its-kind consumer engagement that would allow Real Rockstars to scan their Rockstar Energy product using visual recognition to unlock an AR portal where they could enter to win prizes that would support their personal hustle. The build would provide our target a moment of celebration to play and engage with the brand, while allowing us to drive sales, gather insights about our audience, and ultimately inspire the hustle for thousands of Rockstar fans alongside the new flavor launch.
In March 2021, Rockstar Energy released two new great-tasting Pure Zero flavors amid a decline in in-store foot traffic. This, paired with an ever-increasing audience appetite to experience brands in augmented reality before trying a new product, led us to bring these new flavors to life via a more immersive AR metaverse build. We knew AR would have the unique ability to communicate details about the taste and benefits of the new product, leading our audience to more confident buying decisions, and also position the brand as the energy drink that fuels Real Rockstars with an experience made just for them.
For eight weeks, consumers who grabbed Rockstar and came to the microsite could gain access to the House of Hustle AR metaverse, as well as enter for a chance to win prizes to fuel their personal hustles. The Zero in on the Hustle program was developed with the following strategic builds and functionalities in mind:
Custom-Built Microsite
A fully customized microsite served as the program hub and provided expanded education for the new product—including functional benefits and where to purchase. Within the site, users could create accounts where they could view a transaction history of entries and discover program and prize details.
Visual Recognition
We leveraged visual recognition to validate consumers had a qualifying product in hand. The visual recognition was trained to recognize the nuances in the glares and angles of the product, and to identify unique product SKUs to provide flavor performance data. Custom prompts and ongoing training led to a seamless experience with over a 98% success rate for product scans among users.
Augmented Reality Portal
Through an epic partnership with Blippar, we built an immersive portal within the AR metaverse that featured brand engagements that aligned with the Real Rockstar mindset. Within the mobile portal, consumers could:
Personalized Prizing Approach
Through first-of-its-kind functionality and the use of custom-built APIs, consumers could view their bank of entries within the portal and apply them toward a prize of their choosing. Prizes featured throughout the portal were designed to be flexible enough to support a variety of hustles. Entries were saved within a user’s transaction history.
Data Insights
We created a backend system that allowed us to track time spent exploring different elements of the AR portal – from prizing, to music, to video views. Data collection allowed us to garner meaningful insights on our Pure Zero audience that were previously unavailable to better understand them, support their hustles, and communicate with them.
Not only did the Zero in on the Hustle campaign gain Rockstar Energy notoriety among our audience of hustlers for being the first-ever augmented reality portal with customized prizing, but it successfully drove the following metrics, far exceeding program goals:
