Friday Face-Off: Vitaminwater Quenches Social Media Thirst

0 Comment(s) | Posted Nov 13, 2009 by Pat Morrell

Patrick Morrell

Many of the most successful, most customer-centric brands in the world – Southwest Airlines, Nike, Ticketmaster – have overseen effective forays into social media.  But in my opinion, Coca-Cola subsidiary Glaceau (via its top performing brand) Vitaminwater, has displayed the most genuine social media prowess and engagement to date. 

Vitaminwater first took the leap of faith into the social media arena by advertising the debut of its Facebook page during the 2009 Men's NCAA basketball tournament.  This is just smart marketing, regardless of medium.  Vitaminwater’s target market is health-focused men and women ages 18-24 i.e. healthy college students.  What better place to officially debut a presence to that demographic than during the largest, most popular, most highly publicized college athletic competition of the year.  The Facebook page quickly earned a following of tens of thousands, and a reputation for engagement with fans.

Vitaminwater upped the ante just a few weeks later, unveiling a social media driven marketing campaign on the highly trafficked ESPN.com.  Pitting Kobe Bryant v. Lebron James (as well as their corresponding favorite Vitaminwater flavors) in a “who’s better” matchup, Vitaminwater engaged not only fans of their own brand, but sports fans in general.  Consumers (particularly sports fans) love to debate. Vitamin Water provided a product-oriented forum where fans can hash out arguments about the athletes, as well as the product itself, leading the conversation its fans wanted to have. 

It was such a wise move in fact, that the effort garnered over 350,000 Facebook fans.

Recently, Vitaminwater has rolled out yet another social media outlet with a Steve Nash and 50 Cent-fronted Facebook app.  With a viral video to spur greater interest – in my opinion the cleverest 1:28 of video to date in 2009 – Vitaminwater crowd sourced new flavors and bottle designs from fans, and then let them share those flavors with their existing social networks (as well as the Vitaminwater fan page).  People could then vote for their favorite soon-to-be flavor, with a winner to be unveiled in December of 2009 and then released for consumption in March 2010.  This contest is still on-going, and while submissions have ended, you can still vote for your favorite flavor

The genius of this concept lies in the sharing and engagement.  As Mashable’s Jennifer van Grove reported: “It pulls in social chatter from Google News, Twitter, Flickr and Foodgawker, which means that your tweets, blog posts, searches, and images could all help nominate a flavor for consideration. The more chatter on a flavor, the more likely it will make their final top 10 list.”

This campaign has seen enormous success and participation, generating increasing buzz and earning Vitaminwater 1,087,172 fans (as of 1:18pm EST Thursday).

From no fans in April to 1,000,000+ in November.  All via genuine customer engagement around a simple product.  It works....day and night.

Filed under: Emerging Media, Friday Face-Off, Online Communities