The Splash brand approached The Lab in 2021 with a problem to solve. As a brand that has been in market since 2005, Splash needed to evolve and expand its consumer base. So, in 2021, the brand identity and design its existing consumers had come to know was completely changed. The brand was entirely repositioned to reach beyond its existing consumer to a younger and growing audience interested in fun ways to hydrate. The Splash brand went from one that relied on very small marketing budgets to now needing to reach a new consumer in an entirely new way.
Knowing the product ship to trade was December 2021, we decided to build brand awareness and reach the brand's new, younger target by teasing its "new look" campaign a month before the product hit market. We launched the campaign 11/08/21 and it ran through the end of the year. The key KPIs of the campaign were testing a new media platform to further understand our new audience, engage with these consumers in a memorable way, and begin building awareness of the new Splash Blast brand.
In order to reach Splash Blast's new, younger consumer demographic, we had to launch our campaign on a different platform than we had used for previous media strategies - TikTok. Since Splash Blast had never used TikTok before, we implemented a paid media strategy that would test multiple platform features to see what worked best to drive awareness. This included:
Branded Content:
TikTok is a platform for influencer content, so we knew that in order for our branded content to be relevant we had to lean into platform trends. We did this by using a trending commercial sound, transition effect, and leaned into the bold, graphic nature of the packaging to capture attention.
A Platform Made For Music:
Nostalgia. The word of the year, but also the look and feel of Splash Blast's new packaging design featuring bubbly letters, spray paint, and bold colors. Part of our strategy was identifying a song that matched our brand in 90s nostalgia. We selected Rhythm of The Night not only for its nostalgic feel, but also because it hadn't been associated with a trend before this point which allowed for Splash Blast to easily trend for the sound.
Influencers:
Our new target audience heavily resonates with influencers, so what better way to build awareness and affinity than by using @HappyKelli to develop and share #TheSplashDance! We also worked with 5 other key influencers (@allisonholkerboss,@dancer_aden, @miasweitz,@gwillikers, and @gillytheanswer) to participate in and share the challenge with their audiences. In addition, we had three of our influencers create non-hashtag challenge content to use for our influencer in-feed video assets. This allowed us to tie our reach & frequency campaign back to the hashtag challenge and one day max to create a cohesive message across the platform.
Hashtag Challenge & One Day Max:
Why dancing and #TheSplashDance? Splash's previous campaign was called "Splashdance" which had a more disco-70s vibe. Since that was still running in market to correspond with the existing packaging, we wanted to create a fresh take on a dance for our TikTok consumer that would still tie back to the overall theme that was running across multiple platforms. What better way to celebrate the new look of Splash Blast, and tease its entry into market, than to create a new dance for the brand that leaned into nostalgia in a different, but related way.
The results of the campaign absolutely exceeded expectations with over 5 BILLION hashtag challenge views by the end of 2021! As we only ran a 3 day hashtag challenge, the influencers, dance, and music resonated with new consumers and drove engagement and brand awareness beyond the campaign period.
It’s safe to say that the combination of short-form graphic videos, leaning into nostalgia, amazing influencers, and a memorable dance and music helped us exceed KPIs, and has made TikTok the social platform of choice for Splash Blast and our relaunch.
