2017 Bronze Best use of social media

RAPP UK

Client: Buxton Water

Every Sip of the Way

Campaign overview

Buxton Water had sponsored the London Marathon for four years, but the association was lost.

Setting out to reconnect with runners, from training to after the finish line, the brand became their new running mate of 2017.

Strategy

RAPP UK ignored the performance runners and the comedy costumed runners who get all the media airtime, and focused on the largest and largely ignored contingent: the middle of the pack.

Infrequent runners doing it for their own personal challenge.

Social listening and in-depth interviews with first time runners helped the team identify the critical moments, where Buxton could become a supportive running mate over the course of their training.

This was a marathon, not a sprint.

It was about playing the long game, and being by runners’ sides on a long, hard personal journey, activating the sponsorship along the way.

Creativity

Research revealed runners cared about wellbeing and hydration, but they also cared about goal-setting.

RAPP UK created content to make a genuine emotional connection with runners during their training, matching it to key relevant moments: Sunday run motivation; post run cravings; motivational earworms and gallows humour for when it all got a bit overwhelming.

They also gave runners their own emoji which appeared every time they used #EverySip. Runners were encouraged to record their achievement via ‘memory lane’, these stories were then shared to celebrate their efforts. The periscope live on the day further opened up the Buxton audience to all the supporters keeping the runners motivated.

And it didn't end at mile 26.

The post marathon journey was also critical. Buxton collated content created by their runners into a promoted twitter moment to ride the post-run high.

Results

The impact of the #EverySip campaign proved the value of their marathon sponsorship, but also extended the approach to other sponsorship activity. Ride London cyclists had Buxton with them every sip of the way this summer too.

The journey Buxton took runners on achieved its aim of connecting the brand and its consumers with quantitative post-campaign research, showing recall 280% higher than for competitor brands.

Buxton beat Nestles own benchmark KPIs by 450% and exceeded their Twitter engagements benchmark by 600%.

Twitters research saw a 23 point increase in positive association of Buxton, with the London Marathon and a 16 point increase among those recalling the campaign.

Compared to the 2016 campaign, recall was up 4 points among the exposed audience to 12% and 10 points among the engaged audience to 31%.

Team

Ben Golik (Executive Creative Director) RAPP UK - Lily Peters (Copywriter) RAPP UK - Tom Kennedy (Art Director) RAPP UK - Ally Waring (Planner) RAPP UK - Raj Sandhu (Business Partner) RAPP UK - Adam Rolfe (Creative Director) RAPP UK - Stephen Gordon (Creative Director) RAPP UK

Contributors