Everyone knows what the Jolly Rancher brand is—but few people have reason to talk about it. In an effort to drive frequency and get people talking, Jolly Rancher needed to shift from "like" to "love" amongst its core consumer: An 18-24 year-old, urban, millennial male who we call, "Max."
The thing is, getting Max to pay attention to brands is hard—he doesn't like overt advertising. So we asked ourselves: What can we do to grab Max's attention and get him to engage with us?
We knew that, for Max, summer is a time to let go and have a blast. So, to get his attention, Jolly Rancher aimed to be the official cheerleader of Max's summer fun with #TongueOut, a campaign that encouraged him to wear his summer fun like a badge—in the same place he wears his Jolly Rancher flavor: On his tongue.
The outcome was a comprehensive social media campaign that ran across Vine, Twitter and Facebook from May through June 2014. The Jolly Rancher brand partnered with popular Viners and enlisted participation from our fan base, asking them to share all the ways they went #TongueOut and had untamed summer fun.
Jolly Rancher #TongueOut picked up on a popular hashtag and turned it into an emotional connection to our target. Rather than simply inserting our products into Max's life, we aimed to remove the product from the campaign altogether—using the Jolly Rancher flavor stain on Max's tongue to align ourselves with his interests, attitude and energy.
We knew Max was mostly on Twitter—but we'd only recently re-launched the channel after two years of dormancy and only had 1.7K followers. So, to strengthen our social presence, we leveraged Vine and a popular hashtag, #TongueOut, to build campaign awareness, increase brand association and attract new followers.
We commissioned original Vines from popular influencers, spanning all walks of life (special effects, comedy, sports, etc.). Our influencers showed Max different ways to have untamed summer fun—and ended each video by sticking their #TongueOut to show off their untamed Jolly Rancher flavor.
In total, we created 45 days of content for #TongueOut across all Jolly Rancher social channels. We created 16 videos, distributing them on Vine, Twitter and Facebook—and we supported each with complementary campaigns on Facebook (11 additional posts) and Twitter (13 tweets). We also boosted exposure with an efficient paid support campaign.
The results:
