Drink Up is the Partnership for a Healthier America's consumer campaign to encourage people to drink more water more often.
Drink Up Ashanti was designed to showcase the power of water by demonstrating its effect on an artist and song. In a first of its kind effort, we "dehydrated" Ashanti's new single ("Let's Go") by creating four versions of the song and of the music video that represented increasing levels of hydration. The only way to hydrate the song and video was for people to use #DrinkUpAshanti on Instagram and Twitter. Each post with the hashtag represented the contribution of a drop of water to help reach the next level of hydration. We then took that one step further and allowed anyone who used the hashtag to find their post embedded within the music video itself. The campaign ran from November 5 – December 5, and the song was released for sale on iTunes and other major music platforms at the conclusion of the campaign.
Drink Up strives to talk to audiences in an authentic and engaging voice. In order to tap into Ashanti's extremely loyal and engaged fan base we needed to create a campaign that would speak to her fans and help us spread our message as widely as possible. This campaign provided the perfect platform for us to engage our existing followers while reaching new audiences by supporting an artist they love and bringing her new song to life.
In order to execute Drink Up Ashanti, being that it was a completely new concept, we put together a 360-degree package that would touch every corner of what makes a new single stand out and what causes consumers to take positive notice of a brand.
We created a microsite – DrinkUpAshanti.com – where anyone could track the progress of the song on its journey toward hydration, as well as see which part of the music video their #DrinkUpAshanti post hydrated. The dehydrated versions of the song stripped away instrumental layers, choruses, and had a muffled sound quality. Each level of hydration incorporated more and more layers until the fully blown out single was achieved and released. Heavily relying on CGI technology, the video mirrored the experience of the song. The dehydrated version was darker and felt devoid of energy. As the video hydrated, colors began to fill in and pop and a lush environment developed around Ashanti; the video came to life.
We included behind the scenes footage on the site to engage Ashanti's fan base and provide a window into the process of how this all came together. It was important that anyone visiting the site could easily understand the concept, how it was being achieved and measured, and how they could be a part of it. Mid-way through the campaign we added to the energy and buzz by launching a sweepstakes for a lucky winner to receive an all expenses paid trip to Grenada to see Ashanti in concert. Ashanti was an ideal artist to work with on this because of her extensive music industry experience, and the ability to tap into her massive fan base on social media. Drink Up utilized a combination of paid and earned media to spread the word and reach hundreds of millions of people, raising awareness for the Drink Up brand.
Due to the campaign's heavy social media focus, we curated and posted strategically across all Drink Up platforms (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter), and worked closely with Team Ashanti to do the same. It was key that we spoke to both the Drink Up and Ashanti audiences. We placed digital banner and pre-roll ads, and created press and media buzz via Ashanti interviews on local TV stations, national talk shows and digital outlets. This campaign placed water at the forefront of the new music frontier and utilized social media in a way that was new and extremely successful for Drink Up.
Drink Up Ashanti garnered over 650 million impressions during its one-month run. In addition to adding over 3,000 new followers to Drink Up's social platforms we reached more than 13 million Twitter accounts. Media coverage ranged from an exclusive article on Parade.com to iHeart Media to Dr. Oz, The Real, Hollywood Live, and TMZ. Tack on more than 450,000 likes of #DrinkUpAshanti posts on Ashanti's official Instagram account and we feel the campaign was enthusiastically received and disseminated the Drink Up brand widely.
