Beverage World
June 15, 2003
Bev Solutions: In the Field
Case Study: “A Moving Experience” by Andrew Kaplan
Highlighted blurb next to Skyy Blue Mobile Billboard Photo
reads:
A mobile ad for Skyy Blue lights up the night, drawing the
attention of restaurant and club-goers in Miami’s trendy
South Beach district.
Any marketer will tell you that it’s become harder than
ever to reach a targeted demographic group with advertising
campaigns. Audiences have simply become too fragmented as
cable channels and the Web pull viewers away from the networks
and print media. Aware of this, the marketers of SABMiller’s
upscale flavored malt beverage Skyy Blue decided to take their
brand directly to those consumers most likely to drink it
– literally. The brand launched a mobile ad campaign
that has its eye-catching, high quality creative appearing
on 22 by 10 foot ads up and down the streets of six U.S. cities:
Miami, San Diego, Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington,
DC.
“They drive through the cities, but we also provide
directions on certain areas that are appropriate to visit,”
says Skyy Blue’s brand manager, Laura Emory. “We
can suggest that certain nightlife areas would be a good fit
for the mobile billboards, and that way we are able to reach
the legal drinking age consumer in that nightlife environment.”
The mobile ad campaign has been organized by the New York
City-based Mobile Ad Group. Sam Kaplan, the company’s
vice president of sales and marketing, says it takes two forms:
one on the side of actual delivery trucks and the other on
mobile billboards that, like they sound, are simply billboards
on wheels. What’s really interesting about this medium
is that we can use third-party trucking companies to carry
the message, turning them into a virtual fleet of delivery
trucks for that product,” Kaplan says.
That’s during the day. At night, a lighted billboard
can be parked in front of a nightclub.
The ads will be coming to a city near you this summer. “This
showing is going to be amazing – the weather’s
going to get warmer, people will be out on the street and
here comes this beautiful European beach scene which is very
upscale. It’s going to be unexpected, creating quite
an impact for SABMiller’s Skyy Blue,”
says Kaplan. |
