The wine industry is boring. BABE Wine isn’t. BABE is the carefree wine in a can that’s here to make our consumers feel seen, energized, and relevant. BABE’s goal for 2020 was to drive brand love with core consumers, and drive brand awareness with new audiences. But it’s tough to engage with customers in quarantine. And with traditional sampling venues closed due to COVID, we needed to find new ways to interact with our consumers and give them a much needed energy boost, while staying true to our brand strategy.

BABE’s core consumers thrive at engaging and expressing themselves online. And through social-listening, BABE noticed they weren’t getting the self-care they needed in quarantine. The brief was to activate on this insight in an authentic way.

The objective was to respond in real time to this cultural moment, while driving brand awareness, brand affinity, and product sampling.

It had been 99 days since the last manicure in New York City, and everyone’s nails were literal trash. As a brand dedicated to making our consumers feel seen and energized, BABE Wine created the world’s first-ever Socially-Distanced Manicure Truck to give people two things they desperately needed: a manicure...and wine.

The truck popped up in Brooklyn on a hot summer day to treat New Yorkers to the mani moment they deserved after being stuck inside for months, and then went on the road giving out manis and sampling cans of BABE wine.

Because when everything else is falling apart, the least BABE could do was get people’s nails together.

Early into quarantine, a clear problem emerged for our target audience - their nails were in desperate shape. With nail salons closed, conversation around “quarantine nails” surged.

Additionally, with non-essential businesses closed, BABE lost key opportunities to sample and drive consideration with new consumers.

And as a brand dedicated to making our consumers feel seen, energized, and relevant, we had to step in and help them out with their nails. Even in a socially-distanced world, BABE’s goal for 2020 remained driving brand love and awareness. This was a perfect opportunity to activate the brand to drive brand love with our core audience, reach new consumers at scale, and get cans in hands (when literally everything was closed).

While other brands were just talking about missing normal life, BABE decided to actually do something about it and give people two things they desperately needed: a manicure and wine.

In just 2 weeks, BABE designed and built the world’s first-ever socially-distanced, COVID-safe, Mobile Manicure Truck. During the design process, BABE took all government safety protocols into consideration, incorporating PPE and plexiglass dividers with cutouts for people to stick their hands through.

Once the giant pink truck was ready to go, BABE took to the streets of a foot-traffic-heavy area of Brooklyn on a summer Friday to treat New Yorkers to free manicures and wine.

Even with zero advertising, word quickly spread, and people lined up around the block. Socially-distanced, of course.

The recap video posted to BABE’s Instagram blew up, getting 25,000 views in less than 24 hours.

The activation was so successful that BABE quickly converted the handmade mani truck into a highway-ready mani-van, and took it on a nationwide tour – treating thousands more people across the country to some COVID-safe self-care and wine.

From an earned media and awareness standpoint, BABE’s Socially-Distanced Mani Truck was the highest performing activation of the year. With absolutely no paid media, we drove 25 million PR impressions, and a 500% increase in Earned Impressions and a 200% increase in social mentions vs BABE’s Pre-COVID Super Bowl Activation.

We also dominated category share of voice for the month of July, with BABE making up over 65% of category conversation volume for June and July.

Through the Mani Truck momentum and our socially distanced experiential in 2020, we ultimately executed over 15,000 BABE samplings.

As the pandemic continues, even where nail salons are open, the updated Mani-Van continues to be a successful brand activation for BABE, driving brand awareness, consideration, and sampling wherever it goes.