How The Bottle-O Used Emotion To Create Lasting Summer Memories

In the lead-up to Christmas 2023, The Bottle-O partnered with Avid Collective to position itself as the top choice for Australians when purchasing alcohol. With the crowded holiday and summer season being a key retail moment, the goal was to disrupt the market and capture attention during this competitive period.

The Challenge

The Bottle-O faced stiff competition from well-established players known for convenience, choice, and value. To stand out during the crucial Christmas and summer season, The Bottle-O needed to boost brand recognition and loyalty, while maintaining its value-driven image. At the same time, they needed to appeal to evolving consumer preferences for premium products, balancing affordability with quality and variety. To do this, The Bottle-O needed to associate with relatable festive and summer moments to ensure they were top of mind over the competitors.

The Role Of Branded Content

Branded content presented a crucial opportunity for The Bottle-O to increase brand recall through active attention and time spent with their brand, delivered through longer-form and immersive formats, which they couldn’t achieve through traditional intrusive ad formats

The content needed to integrate The Bottle-O into quintessential Australian summer moments, ensuring the brand was seen as relevant to festive occasions. By leveraging publishers and their platforms that spoke directly to lifestyle and festive social moments, The Bottle-O could align its message with the interests of broad audiences at the perfect time, when they were in the right mindset to be receptive to the brand message.

Branded content offered a unique opportunity for emotional storytelling to bridge the gap where traditional advertising might fall short,and connect with audiences on a deeper, more personal level. Through immersive formats and trusted publishers, the brand aligned itself with meaningful, memorable moments, ensuring that it stayed top of mind during the holiday season.

The Solution

The Bottle-O set out to establish a strong brand association with the holiday season, positioning itself as the ultimate destination for all alcohol shopping needs. To achieve this, in partnership with Avid Collective, designed to maximise recall by tapping into the essence of Australian summer and Christmas traditions.

The campaign was crafted to drive emotional connections between the brand and key festive moments, using human-centered stories that captured the joy, togetherness, and celebration of Christmas. By focusing on authentic experiences and the warmth of holiday gatherings, The Bottle-O could seamlessly integrate into the emotions and traditions that make this time of year special.

Engaging Audiences Through Visual Storytelling and Interactive Formats with Lifestyle Publishers

Avid Collective collaborated with several lifestyle publishers using a range of visual and interactive content formats. The content was distributed and amplified across a range of platforms, including META, YouTube, and TikTok, ensuring The Bottle-O was present wherever audiences consumed content.

By leveraging multiple publishers and content formats, the campaign maximised share of voice and extended reach during the competitive holiday season, helping The Bottle-O stand out against larger liquor retailers.

Daily Mail

Christmas Cocktails Shoppable Guide: Daily Mail engaged audiences with recipes for exciting yet easy-to-make Christmas cocktails. Throughout the content, seamless hyperlinks to The Bottle-O products transformed the article into a captivating shopping experience, enabling readers to recreate the recipes themselves with ease.

Sleigh your Christmas Prep Shoppable Guide: This guide provided all the time saving essentials for mastering your festive season party-prep, offering valuable tips like pre-mixing cocktails and enjoying drinks with delightful festive flavours, leaning into The Bottle-O’s easy going customer value proposition

Junkee

Twelve Drinks Of Christmas: This written article served as a Christmas guide to drinks for various occasions, from decorating the tree, to dinner with the in-laws. The relatable tone, consistent with Junkee’s editorial style, helped draw in readers and encouraged them to explore The Bottle-O’s product range.

Friendmas Do’s & Don’ts Video: The video focused on the key principles of “Friendmas” – including important dos and funny don’ts. The people in the video enjoyed their favourite drinks from The Bottle-O, to connect The Bottle-O with Christmas spirit, showing that the brand is all about holiday happiness and memories.

Backyard Cricket: The themed video captured the essence of an Aussie summer with backyard cricket. The lively interactions with their team made it feel genuine, showing how the Junkee team enjoys the sport in various ways, while also enjoying drinks from The Bottle-O to celebrate the season.

Leveraging Interactive Polls: The polls aimed to engage users and highlight that Christmas varies for everyone. Regardless of how it’s celebrated, The Bottle-O is there to add some festive cheer!

The interactive Instagram Stories featured significant moments in the Aussie Christmas calendar and asked Junkee followers to vote for the most ‘iconic’. The polls were structured similarly to Junkee’s organic posts to maximise engagement

The Sporting News Network:

The video, starring cricket pro Chris Green, offered tips to excel at backyard cricket. It features an engaging interview format with fun footage, voiceovers, and festive music, captivating viewers. The Bottle-O logo and colours were seamlessly woven in, establishing the brand as a trusted expert in local sports, particularly backyard cricket.

The article summarised the tips from the premium video featuring cricket pro Chris Green, aiming to guide viewers to become the ultimate backyard cricket champion. By seamlessly incorporating the YouTube video, the article strategically inserted calls-to-action to The Bottle-O, creating a cohesive brand presence and offering readers a chance to explore the brand’s website.

Results

The human-centric campaign successfully positioned The Bottle-O as the go-to choice for holiday and summer festivities by tapping into authentic, relatable experiences. Through emotional storytelling, the campaign drove a strong increase in brand association and recognition, creating lasting connections with the audience.

The campaign excelled at capturing attention, with view times for both written and video formats significantly surpassing publisher benchmarks. This demonstrated that visual and longer-form content effectively held audience interest, directly contributing to The Bottle-O’s goal of boosting brand recognition and recall.

Emotion also played a crucial role in driving results. By associating the content with nostalgic Australian summer traditions, particularly seasonal sports like backyard cricket, the campaign resonated deeply with viewers. This emotional connection translated into high levels of social media engagement and reinforced The Bottle-O’s position as a key player during a highly competitive time of year.

Key highlights

In total, The Sporting News Network Article generated 10 days’ worth of brand engagement based on the time spent consuming it.
The Daily Mail Articles garnered 101 days of total attention time.
The Sporting News Network Video featuring Chris Green achieved a View through rate of over 66%
The campaign over-delivered on video views by 400%