Global Influencer Marketing agency, Digital Voices' partnership with STARRY – PepsiCo’s lemon-lime flavored soda – began in January 2024. As PepsiCo's trusted partner, we quickly established ourselves as experts in driving awareness, community engagement, and brand love through niche influencer content. Our strategy centered around micro and mid-tier influencers, flooding the TikTok FYP to reach Gen Z, introducing them to their new favorite lemon-lime soda in a competitive market.
Following a successful year of always-on collaboration, STARRY approached us with an exciting new campaign brief: to introduce their limited-time-only flavor, Cranberry Blizz, as the must-have soda of the 2024 holiday season.
The challenge was to establish Cranberry Blizz not just as a seasonal offering but as an essential part of Gen Z’s holiday celebrations, embedding it into their traditions with a playful yet meaningful touch.
Our objective was to deliver a bold and culturally resonant message through diverse influencer partnerships between September and December 2024, paying homage to the seasonality of the product and the emotional significance of the holidays. Our key goals were:
Research
Digital Voices performed thorough research to inform the Cranberry Blizz campaign strategy, from analyzing consumer sentiment via social platforms, previous influencer content promoting STARRY, and Reddit, to leveraging tools like Google and Statista for market insights. This helped identify trends and refine the campaign’s approach to resonate with Gen Z.
We chose TikTok as the primary platform due to its dominance in engaging Gen Z and its proven effectiveness for food and beverage campaigns. TikTok was also our primary success driver for the STARRY brand throughout our previous campaigns.
Creator Selection
We partnered with 17 mid-tier and macro TikTok creators from the foodie and comedic niches, focusing on those whose content aligned with STARRY's fun, absurd, and less polished brand voice. Internally, STARRY works with creator OkCran as an ambassador, who aligns with the listed niches.
This strategic selection ensured the content aligned with what performs well on TikTok, enabling us to meet the client’s aim of 3M organic views guarantee while emphasizing diverse, multicultural representation, particularly within Black and Hispanic creators.
Creative concept
The campaign centered around the theme “Share a STARRY”, tying into the holidays' nostalgic storytelling and family traditions. Our research surfaced the Gen Z trend to gravitate towards Y2K and '90s nostalgia, so we designed campaign content that leveraged these insights to align the product with shared moments of joy.
Influencers were given four flexible content themes – Sibling Olympics, People at “Cran”-mas, Thanksgiving Classics, and Storytime Nostalgia – to create entertaining and relatable content that integrated the STARRY Cranberry Blizz soda while preserving their unique styles. Digital Voices’ production team undertook onboarding calls with each creator to ensure brand alignment and discuss creative thought starters.
Examples of standout content include:
Cultural relevance
The campaign’s uniqueness stems from its seamless integration of STARRY Cranberry Blizz into authentic, culturally inclusive content, emphasized by Digital Voices’ deep expertise and strategic approach. Our global team, representing diverse backgrounds and interests, played an essential role in shaping the campaign. With team members who themselves fit the target demographic, and including content creators as employees, we used our firsthand understanding of Gen Z’s preferences and behaviors to inform every aspect of the strategy.
This insider perspective allowed us to guide influencers in creating content that felt organic, entertaining, and resonant with the audience while maintaining the playful essence of the STARRY brand.
With each campaign, we extract valuable insights to inform and enhance future strategies. This data is logged in our proprietary AI planning & strategy tool, Composer.
The campaign’s blend of strategic creator selection, culturally relevant storytelling, and humor positioned STARRY Cranberry Blizz as the must-have soda of the 2024 holiday season.
With over 6.3 million organic impressions, the campaign more than doubled the 3 million organic views guarantee, exceeding the target by 110%. This success can be attributed to the strategic selection of 17 mid-tier and macro creators who spanned different backgrounds, balancing connecting with niche communities amongst Gen Z and having a large reach.
With Paid boosting, the final impression outcome was 55.2 million.
The content established Cranberry Blizz as an essential part of Gen Z’s holiday celebrations by showcasing it in nostalgic family traditions with a humourous yet meaningful touch. It gained 14,000 engagements and a remarkable 92% positive sentiment in the comments, emphasizing how well the content resonated with the audiences of the mid-tier to macro influencers we selected.
Standout comments included:
These responses highlight the campaign's ability to generate excitement and curiosity about STARRY Cranberry Blizz, cementing its cultural relevance among Gen Z consumers during the holiday season.
To ensure cultural resonance in future campaigns, we can refer back to the data we added to our strategy tool, Composer, to ensure that every element of our work meets and consistently exceeds expectations.
