The interaction between global and local influencers supercharged the reach and engagement of Mentos’ Fizzooka campaign, says Josephine Pike, global client partner at Wavemaker.
In March, Mentos released a bazooka weapon fuelled by Mentos and cola on Fortnite Creative, the sandbox of the popular battle-royale video game, where players can build their own maps and experiences.
BBH London and Wavemaker helped create the branded tactical item, using the famous Mentos and cola geyser experiment, which has often been repeated in online videos on social media, as inspiration.
Speaking of the brand’s challenge ahead of the campaign, Pike told MediaCat UK that while Mentos is ‘an incredible brand in terms of awareness’, there was ‘a real need to reignite passion’ among Gen Z audiences.
She explained that in order to reignite the passion for the brand, they had to first look at what it was famous for, what people associated it with, and whether those associations were still relevant.
‘If you look across socials in terms of how people associate with the brand today or how that has changed over time, the one thing that the business is globally known for — and consistently known for — is that experiment. People like to play with the brand because of the Mentos and the cola association,’ Pike said.
The challenge of the campaign, she said, was to refresh that association and make it relevant to Gen Z audiences who ‘consume content in very different spaces’. Knowing that ‘gaming is huge’ for this demographic, featuring the experiment in Fortnite Creative was the next logical step.
‘The Fizzooka was physically available in certain games as a drop for two weeks. Those games were selected because they’re promoted within the homepage of the platform and they are the largest games played by the target audience,’ Pike said.
But it was not just about the platform. It was also about the creators, whose content Gen Z audiences consume.
Pike explained that the team decided to take two approaches to creator partnerships; they selected certain ‘hero global creators’ — such as The Hacksmith, who created a real life-size Fizzooka — but also identified ‘unique local creators’ in select markets to push the message forward.
The local creators received replicas of the life-size Fizzooka and, according to Pike, had an enormous impact on the campaign.
‘We’ve got some amazing results [from] the combination of the global influencers together with a local partner,’ she said. ‘We saw significantly higher pick up on additional posts outside of commercial agreements, which was very interesting in terms of end-of-campaign evaluations.’
Pike added that the markets in which the brand combined global and local influencers saw ‘increased engagement’ and a ‘much higher’ number of ‘free added value mentions’.
‘I think we lead with things that are taking place in the USA or things that may be taking place in the UK just because of the size of those markets, but the combination of global and local was what helped to make this lift off,’ Pike said.
MediaCat UK asked Wavemaker for results from the campaign but had not received any at the time the article went to press
