The Topo Chico brand was built in the field, case-by-case, bottle-by-bottle. To achieve their cult status in their initial US markets, they focused on local activations that put them at the center of cultural passion points that matter to their audience — Music, Food, Art and Fashion.
During our first meeting with Topo Chico their brief to us was simple: “Don’t fuck it up.”
We nodded and said we were familiar with the concept of not fucking things up, but asked them to expand a bit.
They clarified by saying, “How do we scale our massively beloved cult brand with a creative platform that maintains our authenticity, honors our partners, and paves the way for expansion into new markets and audiences?”
The quickest way to make a beloved brand not-so-beloved is to make advertising for it.
Our goal was for Topo to take a backseat, and instead use Topo Chico’s cultural cache to support our friends in the world of independent music.
There are far too many fantastic bands with incredible music videos wallowing away online with next to zero views. So, we channeled our inner Rick Rubin and used Topo Chico’s Instagram as a stage to celebrate overlooked independent musicians to give them the spotlight they so richly deserve.
Enter #TopoPremieres, a weekly music video showcase giving shine to up-and-coming musicians by rebroadcasting their slept-on music videos each week to be appreciated by our legion of Topo Chico fans.
We leveraged Topo Chico’s artistic community of animators and had them create bespoke Topo music video bumpers, inspired by MTVs golden era of music videos, to intro each video. We drove fans to artists’ social channels, tour info, merch pages, and may or may not have received a few pieces of fan mail we were more than happy to pass along. We gave credit to the artist, video director and their collaborators, as well as our bumper animators and designers.
We featured a total of 20 bands, made 20 bumpers, and introduced over 250,000 new fans to a whole lot of independent music and one helluva playlist.
We even helped one artist, Sam Evian, take a live performance of his new single, “Dream Free” featuring Hannah Cohen and turn it into a magical, animated wonderland of a music video with the help of animator and super fan James Dybvig. Paid for and promoted by none other than Topo Chico.
We didn’t break the Internet.
We didn’t win a Grammy for “Reggaeton Barbershop Quartet Single”
But, we did give some shine to over 20 well deserving independent brands.
And that’s all that matters to a brand like Topo Chico.
