2010: Robinsons, Brand Revitalisation: Case Study

A powerful combination of integrated marketing and content creation restored the fortunes of this former market leader.

Key insights

• With Robinsons Fruit Shoot under pressure on a number of fronts, Britvic Soft Drinks gave the green light to a comprehensive marketing communications strategy to revitalise the brand.
• It was built on the insight that the brand needed to rebuild its appeal to children and then mothers would buy it. This led to the development of a highly involving campaign based on boosting kids’ skills.
• A holistic blend of online and offline content ensured that the whole became greater than the sum of its parts.

Summary

Robinsons Fruit Shoot is a key brand in the portfolio of Britvic Soft Drinks, one of Europe’s leading soft drinks companies. When Robinsons launched Fruit Shoot in 2000, it was an overnight success. The iconic sports pack and distinctive ‘’by kids, for kids’ positioning (supported by kids being involved in formula creation) made it cool for the playground. Its practical no-spill cap made it equally a hit with mothers. The brand went from strength to strength to become a leading fast-moving consumer goods brand.

However, over the following years it faced a number of threats. Not only had the competition become tougher (including the rise of retailer own-brands) but by 2008 it was confronted with difficult market conditions brought about by the recession, increasing health concerns among the public and an over-reliance on promotions.

To counter perceptions that the drink was unhealthy, Britvic decided to appeal to children and mothers by championing skills development. This was based on the insights that purchasing preferences among mothers were driven by what their children wanted.

A comprehensive marketing communications strategy including digital content creation, mainstream advertising and a nationwide talent search all transformed the brand’s position. By 2009 Fruit Shoot was once again enjoying rising sales.

Brand under attack

Since its launch in 2000 Robinsons Fruit Shoot had been a market leader and an important part of Britvic’s commercial portfolio. However, maintaining this position was a constant challenge. By 2006 the number of brands vying for a slice of this segment of the ready-to-drink market was increasing, with a plethora of cheaper me-toos from retailer own brands as well as fresher, healthier alternatives such as Tropicana Go! and Innocent Smoothies for kids. Moreover, by 2008 increasing concerns about children’s diet and the UK recession created an increasingly difficult operating environment.

For example, following the ‘Jamie’s school dinners’ campaign and the media furore about increasing child obesity in the UK, legislators were under pressure to take action. In 2007 commercials for junk food were banned from children’s television. Lunchboxes were the next target, with negative coverage about the high fat, sugar and salt levels in the processed food that children took to school. Schools began to place restrictions on what could constitute a packed lunch, with some schools banning confectionery and unhealthy snacks such as crisps.

To compound the problems, the recession meant that mothers were increasingly sensitive to prices. This price-sensitivity had a negative effect on non-essential purchases, leading to an overall decline in the soft drinks market.

In order to meet the needs of these price-sensitive consumers, retailers were increasingly demanding longer and deeper promotions across all categories. Brand owners in need of distribution were forced to pay the price. As the second most promotionally-reliant category in the supermarket, soft drinks were suffering more than most and Fruit Shoot was no exception. By early 2008, it had succumbed to the pressure and given the retailers what they wanted.

Predictable promotions led to a spike in sales. However, increased volume sales disguised an unsustainable trend: as the average price per litre declined, margins were being squeezed. As 2008 drew to a close, Britvic made a conscious decision to protect the brand’s value and reduce its reliance on promotions. In a marketplace characterised by promotion, with aggressive discounting from competitors Capri-Sun and Ribena, Fruit Shoot’s brand equity wasn’t strong enough to support an increased average retail price and sales declined.

The outlook seemed bleak. Growing health concerns, lower disposable income and competitor promotions meant that mothers were finding it harder to justify Fruit Shoot’s premium price point, which was more in line with fresh drinks from the refrigerated aisle. Brand tracking revealed that the perception by mothers that Fruit Shoot was worth paying more for was in decline (Figure 1).

To add to the brand’s woes, children were not as happy to be seen with the brand as they used to be. While this was partially due to competitors vying for their attention, it was clear that the brand had taken its foot off the gas. Children are more fickle than adults when it comes to choosing brands and they had moved on to the next thing (Figure 2).

Rather than maintaining its leading position, Fruit Shoot was effectively going backwards. If it carried along that trajectory, sales were predicted to decrease significantly.

Beginning the fight back

The commercial challenge for the brand and its communications partner Bartle Bogle Hegarty was clear. The negative trend had to be reversed, boosting sales and supporting the higher-than-average retail price. Marketing communications had to ignite demand or retailers could once again force the brand to take another promotional hit. However, the communications had to appeal both to mothers and children, audiences with wildly different motivations.

To convince mothers to start buying the brand again concerns about health had to be addressed. It might have seemed obvious to do this by stressing that the range contained no artificial colours or flavours and that 85% of the products sold were low sugar or by focusing on the pure juice variant, 100%. But research among this key audience revealed that while the health aspects were important, what mothers really cared about were their children’s happiness. This was driven home by brand tracking data which confirmed that the mothers’ perceptions that their children were happy to be seen drinking Fruit Shoot were in decline.

The insight that what their children preferred was the motivation behind mothers’ preference led to what would be the focus for the campaign: to bring children back to the brand, which had played a key part in Fruit Shoot’s original success.

Regaining credibility in the playground

Nine years after launch of Fruit Shoot, the brand environment surrounding children had evolved beyond recognition. The number of products and corresponding messages aimed directly at them had risen significantly, the volume of commercial messages that they were exposed to had also increased and their access to and engagement with new media channels available was near saturation.

The one thing that was very clear from spending time with 8-year-olds was that to have credibility a brand had to provide ‘playground currency’. This could be defined as anything kids wanted to share, pass on or trade with their friends – from what was in their lunchbox to the laces in their trainers. The brand needed to offer this sort of currency but in a way that was credible.

Since its launch, Fruit Shoot had built an association with sport, from the iconic sports pack and cap to campaigns for getting active. This heritage, coupled with the learning that children desire to learn new things and get better at them led to a key consumer insights: new skills that kids can learn and share with their mates make great playground currency. This would establish the brand as a credible playground partner –with the resulting impact on demand. Giving children tangible skills would also be a powerful way to change mothers’ perceptions of the brand (Figure 3).

The right content for the right channel

Encouraging children to get involved with new skills and, ultimately, with Fruit Shoot versus other brands, while at the same time doing this in the wider context of entertainment, required more than could be delivered through traditional advertising alone. What it called for instead was more in-depth content creation.

This led to they development of a rich and interactive 360° experience where individual channels had their own distinct yet complimentary roles, creating a holistic effect more powerful than the individual elements could achieve alone (Figure 4).

Digital formed the lynchpin of the skills platform because of its participative nature and as a reflection of children’s current media habits (according to the Childwise Report of 2009, 85% of children are online for an average of two hours a day). A digital learning tool called fruitshoot.com was designed to help the children get immersed in the new skills, and featured ‘wow + how’ video tutorials which delivered inspiration and facilitation of over 40 different skills, from diabolo to BMX (Figure 5). Mentions were seeded on popular sites for kids to attract them to the brand’s site.

The role of TV was to provide scale and a sense of cool. A TV ad featuring the ‘Juice Crew’, who were a group of ordinary kids with extraordinary skills, grabbed their attention and directed them to the site to learn more.

An advertiser-funded programme was developed with Children’s ITV (CiTV) called Skillicious Fruit Shoot H20. This helped maximise the budget by leveraging the associated media value. Moreover, station idents were included in the package from CiTV which removed traditional sponsorship costs and cemented brand association (Figure 6). Skillicious was repeated numerous times and a second series commissioned by CiTV.

In 2010 the brand built on the popularity of the ‘Juice Crew’ and launched a nationwide talent search to find the stars of the next commercial. Kids could either upload a video online or attend one of over 30 live auditions nationwide. To inform and excite them about the auditions, a refreshed version of the original ad and a film, Pick me, were created and seeded online.

A positive shift in perceptions

Children

• At its peak, 73% of 7-9 year-olds were aware of the Fruit Shoot launch campaign, while 47% of all those who saw the campaign thought it was a ‘really cool’ idea – cool being a proxy for playground credibility.
• The perception of cool was driven by learning skills, showing that it had become a playground currency. The key attitudinal measure – ’it (Fruit Shoot) would be my best friend’ – rose to the highest levels since the tracking began, as did that for brand consideration.
• Brand association of the 2010 marketing with Fruit Shoot was at 70% of recognisers, showing that the link between Fruit Shoot and skills was deepening. The idea of skills was still perceived by kids to be cool, with high level of brand consideration maintained.

Mothers

• Kids who had seen the launch campaign were 62% more likely to ask their mothers for Fruit Shoot, reflected in a significant increase in mothers’ perceptions of their children’s preference. Mothers’ scores for involvement with the brand also rose 13%.
• Aligning Fruit Shoot with skills and activity resulted in a shift in mothers’ perceptions of the brand (Figure 7). Having seen the launch campaign, 31% of mothers said it made them feel better about buying the brand. This correlated with a turnaround in their preference for the brand with 23% of them showing an increased intention to purchase despite the price premium.

Robust returns

Against a backdrop of recession, increasingly price conscious consumers and a 1.5% increase in Fruit Shoot’s average retail price on the previous year, Fruit Shoot was able to buck the category trend:

• It reduced the volume sold on promotion by 7.3% in 2009.
• As sales, driven by the skills launch campaign, increased those driven by promotion declined.
• In addition, the campaign continued to drive growth, as could be seen from the increased share of the kids’ ready-to-drink sector (Figure 8).
• An econometric model was used to isolate the effect of brand communications on sales. The effect of communications is calculated by modelling a scenario without communications support but with all other factors remaining equal. The difference between the sales achieved with communications and the scenario without showed the total effect of the campaign. Value uplift over the campaign (advertising vs no advertising) was 8.3%, while volume uplift was 8.1%.

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