The evian brand competes in the crowded bottled water category for the attention of one of the toughest consumer groups around: 'influential cosmopolitan' urban trendsetters. To reinvigorate its brand and lift purchase intent within this tough audience, evian decided to create a new viral campaign on the theme 'Live Young'. The evian agency in France, created a 'Live Young' launch video of babies roller skating — and roller break-dancing — to Sugar Hill Gang’s classic hip-hop hit, 'Rapper’s Delight'. Our challenge was to get Roller Babies in front of the right audience in the right way, making it stand out from the 13 billion-plus videos that are viewed online every month.

In July 2009, with a budget of USD 26K and a laser-focused strategic social media approach, we catapulted evian’s Live Young Roller Babies into digital history. Highlighted on hundreds of blogs and featured on all three of the top U.S. morning TV shows, it became the No.1 most-viewed ad spot on YouTube (ever) and the No.1 most-searched Google term.

evian credits the campaign buzz with turning around a two year sales decline and yielding an astonishing 5% sales increase and 8% volume lift in just one month!

We recommended a YouTube homepage buyout for the video’s launch date, complementing a four-phased PR launch.

Phase 1: We conducted targeted outreach to 30 top-tier bloggers in music, culture and entertainment offering them the chance to premiere evian’s Live Young video plus access to evian digital extras.

Phase 2: We distributed an official press release to an expanded group of online media outlets, directing them to YouTube for access to all evian program assets.Phase 3: We reached out to top-tier media outlets including The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS Early Show, Access Hollywood, and Entertainment Weekly.

Phase 4: We kept the momentum going by generating sustaining coverage in outlets such as CBS Primetime, the New York Daily News, XM Satellite’s "Oprah Radio" the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Daily Herald, CNN "Showbiz Tonight". We also generated over 500 additional blog postings between August and December 2009.

Generate 100 million impressions: • Almost 500 million media impressions + 700 press placements.

• Coverage on all three U.S. morning shows.

• 97% positive media reaction.

Generate consumer and media buzz with 15-20 blog postings • 550 blog postings to date • No.1 most-searched term on Google by consumers - Driven traffic to view “Live Young” videos • Set a Guinness World Record for the most views of an online video — 40 million people have seen it to date• It is No.1 ad to hit YouTube to dateReinvigorate brand equity to affect target’s purchase decisions• evian attributes a 5% sales increase and 8% volume increase in the 6 weeks post-launch to the campaign• The month the campaign launched evian® sales rose for the first time after 2+ years of decline.• Equivalent ad value: $493,115 (print and broadcast only).