2015 Bronze Anvil Winner Highlight: Overnight Coffee Challenge Heats Up Genuine Thermos Brand
For more than 110 years, Genuine Thermos® Brand products have been keeping coffee hot. But, over time, the brand didn’t seem to be recognized as a cultural icon, due to “container clutter.” In the face of this, how could Thermos reinvigorate enthusiasm for the veteran brand and its superior technology?
The Overnight Coffee Challenge.
Spong decided to reinforce the brand’s technological legacy and pop culture relevance by demonstrating its core product benefit: the heat retention performance of its vacuum insulated products. They leveraged two insights to provide strategic direction for the campaign:
- Thermos brand products can keep liquids hot for up to 24 hours, so the technology story could be told through a compelling product demonstration.
- The coffee culture in America is thriving.
Spong set out to find the best coffeehouses in the country based on reputation for sourcing, roasting and brewing renowned coffee. As a result, Ritual Coffee Roasters (San Francisco), Spyhouse Coffee (Minneapolis), Octane (Atlanta) and Boxcar Coffee (Denver) were selected as their partners.
The campaign focused on the overlap of coffee lovers and technology fans, particularly working professionals who have coffee knowledge and tastes and appreciate the Thermos brand technology. So, Spong invited Americans to literally wake up and smell the country’s best coffee, and drink it, still hot, when it arrived overnight via shipment to their doorsteps. Baristas at famous coffee roasters ground and brewed fresh coffee, poured it into Thermos brand 40 oz. Beverage Bottles, packed them into a delivery box, and overnighted them by plane.
More than 125 overnight coffee shipments successfully arrived at homes from New York City to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, to Lafayette, Louisiana, and Ocala, Florida — still piping hot. To tell the story, Spong created and distributed created and distributed shareable content to media and fans. The content included a teaser video, wire release, syndicated article and infographic with media outlets and partner bloggers. They also invited Facebook fans to enter to win Overnight Coffee deliveries and notified opt-in subscribers via the Thermos brand e-newsletter.
Following the national campaign, they moved operations to Spyhouse Coffee Roasters in Minneapolis. The second Challenge surpassed the first in terms of media coverage, and to continue the campaign throughout the year, they also partnered with Octane Coffee in Atlanta and Boxcar Coffee in Denver.
The results exceeded expectations in the first seven months of the campaign. After four rounds of shipments, Spong generated more than 60.8 million campaign impressions with top-tier earned placements in The Atlantic, The Daily Meal, Thrillist and more. The also secured blog content from influential websites such as Cool Hunting, Hello Giggles, Gothamist, Hypebeast, Serious Eats, Chicagoist, SFist and Eater.
During the campaign, Thermos.com sessions increased 10.6 percent and page views increased by 13.1 percent compared to the previous period, with earned media the primary driver of traffic to the website.
In addition, referral traffic from Facebook increased by 44.2 percent year-over-year, and the Thermos Facebook audience grew by 22.8 percent.
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