Truly Deeply/Madly

Ran­dom Acts of Brand-Oriented Kind­ness
There’s been a raft of dis­cus­sion recently about the strat­egy of inte­grat­ing ran­dom acts of kind­ness into a brands’ com­mu­ni­ca­tions. On the one hand we have a line of think­ing that ques­tions the motives of the brands at the cen­ter of these ges­tures — on the other hand we have a view that any­thing that cre­ates joy is worth­while — regard­less of strings attached. This recent ges­ture by fruit bev­er­age brand Trop­i­cana has once again put the spot­light on the debate about brand-led acts of kind­ness (see the ad and pics after the jump).

The Trop­i­cana brand is rais­ing the sun – both lit­er­ally and fig­u­ra­tively – through its new “Brighter Morn­ings for Brighter Days” mar­ket­ing cam­paign launch­ing on March 1^st. And it couldn’t come at a bet­ter time, when Cana­dian pride is at an all-time high. Begin­ning next week, Trop­i­cana will invite Cana­di­ans on a jour­ney to one of the country’s north­ern­most towns dur­ing the cold­est and dark­est days of the winter. It was here that the num­ber one juice brand deliv­ered the sun – both lit­er­ally and fig­u­ra­tively – this past January. Tropicana’s “brighter morn­ings” story from Inu­vik marks the first expres­sion of entirely new and uncharted emo­tional cam­paign ter­ri­tory for Canada’s mar­ket leader in juices.

Begin­ning this year, Trop­i­cana will no longer be sim­ply a brand of orange juice — it will become Canada’s National Provider of Brighter Morn­ings. The cam­paign is an evo­lu­tion of the brand’s her­itage as the juice leader in Canada, high­light­ing the impor­tant role it plays in the morn­ing rit­ual of mil­lions of Cana­di­ans. To kick-off the national cam­paign, Trop­i­cana lit­er­ally brought a brighter morn­ing to the frigid, remote Arc­tic town of Inu­vik, North­west Ter­ri­to­ries, where its 3,500 res­i­dents live with­out a sun­rise for weeks each win­ter. A team of Cana­dian film­mak­ers cap­tured the mon­u­men­tal rais­ing of the sun in Inu­vik for a series of documentary-style com­mer­cials, which will be fea­tured promi­nently in the new campaign.

“This is a ground­break­ing cam­paign for Trop­i­cana that takes our brand into a com­pelling emo­tional ter­ri­tory that expresses what con­sumers have been telling us about Trop­i­cana for years — that it really bright­ens their morn­ings and takes them from awake to alive each day,” says Dale Hooper, Vice-President Mar­ket­ing, Pep­siCo Bev­er­ages Canada. “Our expe­ri­ences in Inu­vik, and the beau­ti­ful documentary-style spots that we cre­ated there, will form the first chap­ters of an ongo­ing story that we want to cre­ate with our con­sumers online and through social media.”

To fur­ther express its “Brighter Morn­ings for Brighter Days” mes­sage while on loca­tion in Inu­vik, the brand pro­vided 1,200 free car­tons of Trop­i­cana Pure Pre­mium® Orange Juice – one for every house­hold in the community. The Trop­i­cana team also worked with local lead­ers to iden­tify community-based break­fast and nutri­tion pro­grams in need of finan­cial sup­port. As a result, Trop­i­cana is proud to have made con­tri­bu­tions to Sir Alexan­der Macken­zie School, Tot Spot Day­care and the Inu­vik Food Bank.

In addi­tion to the TV adver­tis­ing, the cam­paign fea­tured blogged com­men­tary and behind-the-scenes imagery from Inu­vik to pro­vide a cat­a­lyst for con­ver­sa­tion on a new Trop­i­cana Brighter Morn­ings Face­book page. Through­out the course of the cam­paign, Trop­i­cana cre­ated and facil­i­tated com­pelling “brighter morn­ings” sto­ries with con­sumers online, through social media, pub­lic rela­tions ini­tia­tives and a major spon­sor­ship with Break­fast Tele­vi­sion in key mar­kets across Canada.

This style of brand ges­ture are typ­i­cally effec­tive in gen­er­a­tion PR cov­er­age. Here’s a snip­pet of some of the cov­er­age Trop­i­cana gen­er­ated with this lit­tle act of kindness.

And here’s the orig­i­nal ‘brighter morn­ings’ ad:

Love the beau­ti­ful brand images cre­ated by this gesture:

I take the view that brands will com­mu­ni­cate to mar­ket in a range of ways — some more enter­tain­ing than oth­ers, and some of greater value to human­ity than oth­ers — but all will have com­mer­cial moti­va­tion. For me, brand ges­tures that are about gen­er­at­ing acts that lift the human spirit are the very best kind — let’s just not expect cor­po­ra­tions to be some­thing they are not.

Dave Ansett, Bran­da­men­tal­ist
Cre­ator of Brand Ges­tures
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 24th, 2011 at 7:00 am and is filed under Brand Agency, Brand-Storytelling, Experiences, Graphic Design Melbourne. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.