With a sea of orange sodas to choose from, Fanta aims to stand out and be the top-of-mind choice for consumers by owning our iconic orange. On social media, Fanta is bold, playful, unhinged, and can be a little scrappy to break through the noise and make a splash. So, when we discovered that there was a phenomenon in NYC during which city dwellers are focused on another big, orange object…we had to step in to own this orange moment.
Manhattanhenge occurs when the setting sun (or as we call it, “big orange”) aligns precisely with the Manhattan street grid, creating a radiant glow of light across the city. People gather from all corners of the city to capture this “bucket list” moment and flood social with their pics.
In true Fanta fashion, we aimed to make this cultural moment all about us in a seemingly organic, earned way by sending a social squad to capture our glory. With no media or production budget we had two goals: make it onto the @WhatIsNewYork accounts and earn video views & engagement.
We deployed our Fanta Team Task Force, a group of several "bystanders" to an iconic Manhattanhenge viewing location to film our equine Fanta fan holding up a large Fanta amid the chaos.
Our crew hit the streets of Manhattan with a Fanta bottle, horse head, their cellphones, and a dream. The goal? Make a splash on social and make it about us.
Without the support of paid media or PR to help boost this moment for us, we turned to an existing social account, @WhatIsNewYork (an account that highlights the unusual, quirky “only in New York” moments that make the city so special), to make our moment bigger. We knew what @WhatIsNewYork liked (chaos), so we dressed our Fanta stan in a horse head to draw extra attention while also ensuring the anonymity of our team. We slid into @WhatIsNewYork’s DMs and submitted around six videos total, to create the impression that it was a *significant event* submitted by multiple people.
And no horsing around — it worked! Soon after the phenomenon, @WhatIsNewYork featured our Fantahenge moment on both their Instagram and TikTok channels in-feed, generating high visibility and interaction for the brand. In addition to the main goal of the @WhatIsNewYork handle, it also captured the attention of bystanders in NYC who were present.
@WhatIsNewYork typically shares stories rather than in-feed posts, unless they expect high engagement…and our Fantahenge moment made it to their feed.
Across Instagram and TikTok channels, with a potential reach of 2.5M, @WhatIsNewYork’s Fanta Manhattanhenge content received over 1.7M views and over 18.2K engagements.
We further amplified the moment by resharing the content to Fanta’s Instagram Story, generating an average completion rate of over 85% in just 24 hours, and landing as one of our top Instagram Stories for the year.
