The cider category was in massive growth, but Strongbow, the market leader, was in decline, looking dated and feeling uncool. We needed to regain momentum, get 18-35-year-olds to embrace us so as to arrest the sales decline.Our strategy was focused on 'owning' summer – Strongbow’s key cider-sales time. We decided to celebrate the start of summer by doing something at the ultimate representation of summer in Australia, the beach.

No brand 'owned' the official start to summer – December 1st. The campaign began with a 50-days-to-summer countdown. Then we staged Australia’s largest neon surf-stunt at Bondi on summer’s eve, threw a cracking party for 300 influencers, filmed both, ensured the viral campaign was in place and ensured everyone knew about it within 24 hours of December 1st.The results speak for themselves:* AUS$1.92m increase in value sales - YOY = 10.3 per cent increase (Nov-Dec 2011 v Nov-Dec 2010);* Strongbow drinkers grew by 131%, 72% faster than the growth of the total cider category;* 185 media-clips including media coverage on every major free-to-air news bulletin in Sydney, online, major metropolitan newspapers and international coverage, equating to 32.5m in readership/viewership;* 433,000 + views on YouTube of the 3-inute video and 414 comments;* 2nd-most-viewed YouTube video in Australia during its first week online;* The YouTube link was shared over 2,500 times on Twitter.

Digital PR began 50 days before the stunt, with a countdown-to-summer video sent out via YouTube to 700 influencers. We stayed deliberately mysterious but did create a Twitter #strongbowsummer to encourage the conversation. Twitter activity continued and we created the official Strongbow Facebook page to share content and create a community. A content-seeding campaign meant the final video was sent to 200,000 target influencers and placed high on Google and YouTube.Traditional PR saw us place a story on page 3 of Sydney’s Metro daily the day before summer’s eve and included the Facebook page and Twitter to help draw the crowd of hundreds lining the beach.As well as the stunt, which was viewed by influencers and hundreds of the public that lined the beach, we organised a party at Bondi Icebergs for 300 of Sydney’s key influencers in this space who ripped into the new Strongbow variants and danced to our coolest DJs.

AUS$1.92m increase in value sales YOY = 10.3% increase (Nov-Dec 2011 v Nov-Dec 2010).The number of Strongbow-drinkers grew by 131%, 72% faster than the growth of the total cider category.185 media clips including media coverage on every major free-to-air news-bulletin in Sydney, online, major metropolitan newspapers and international coverage, equating to 32.5 million in readership/viewership.433,000+ views on YouTube of the 3-minute video and 414 comments.It was the 2nd-most-viewed YouTube video in Australia during its first week online.The YouTube link was shared over 2,500 times on Twitter.What the client said: “We gave a challenging PR brief and I have never seen a team work so hard on delivering perfection to every element of the campaign. We were ecstatic with the outcome and they delivered over and above all expectations.”