Overview

As an established spirits brand, familiarity could help build confidence in the product and its taste. But it could also lead people to assume they were seeing the familiar alcoholic drink. The campaign, which spanned spanning outdoor, digital and television advertising, needed to draw on the brand’s strengths whilst making the alcohol-free difference clear.

Approach

When people encounter the comms in real life, alcohol-free drinks probably aren’t going to be on their minds. They might be thinking about the meeting ahead, what to cook for dinner or whether they’ll catch their train. Our research needed to reflect that.

Using ReTrack™, we recreated the real-life context and mindset in which people would encounter the campaign, then introduced the executions amongst competitor ads. By concealing the research focus and avoiding prior discussion of alcohol-free drinks, we could explore whether the advertising itself caught attention, communicated the proposition and made it feel relevant and appealing.

We captured people’s immediate, reflexive responses, reflecting how advertising is often encountered in everyday life. Purchase simulations then helped us explore whether the messages influenced product awareness and consideration in a shopping context.

We also evaluated television storyboards and explored how exposure to the wider campaign shaped responses to the static ads.

Finally, we dug deeper to explore what drove those initial responses and where changes to messaging, layout and tone could strengthen the campaign.

Output

Recognising the product is one thing. Seeing a reason to try it is another. The research revealed how priming and communication hierarchy shaped both.

We identified how the advertising’s starting point shaped the response, including which associations it brought to mind, how these framed the product and whether they made it feel relevant.

The client gained clear direction on which television route, static layout and headline to progress, and how to strengthen them. Recommendations covered what needed to land first and how wording, humour and imagery could build understanding and appeal.

Together, these insights provided a clear route to building awareness and appeal for the new proposition whilst drawing on the familiar brand’s strengths.

Following launch, the product generated almost £1 million in sales in its first month, and the brand became the market leader in the alcohol-free spirits segment.