What is iced coffee?

Iced coffee is a popular drink in Australia, currently enjoyed in more than three million households. It’s the combination of milk and coffee (real or essence), sweetened with sugar and served chilled as a Ready To Drink beverage.

What is a pick-me-up?

In this context, it’s food or drink that gives you a boost of physical and / or mental energy when you’re feeling low.

Aussies are increasingly sugar conscious:

Unlike their iced coffee counterparts, broader pick-me-up competitors like Red Bull, Coca-Cola and V Energy offer low/no sugar options. This has made them an even greater threat to Dare in a time when Australians are conscious of cutting down on sugar.

Creative strategy:

Distinguish the Dare brand by promising mental strength when people aren’t thinking straight. Use Dare’s superior real coffee credentials as the functional proof to underpin this strategy.

Proposition:

Dare will keep you mentally switched on when you’re not thinking straight.

Creative Idea:

Dare is the solution for every occasion where people find themselves not thinking straight.

Media strategy:

Reach the target audience wherever and whenever they’re most likely to be tired, muddled, and not thinking at their best.

Creative expression:

Our 'A Dare Fix’ll Fix It' tagline presented Dare as the ultimate pick me up, for moments when you’ve made a silly mistake, to moments when you’re about to.

Traditionally, iced coffee brands promised blue-collar workers a physical pick-me-up through campaigns that heroed physical strength. Energy drinks targeted a similar group by playing up extreme, adrenaline-fuelled behaviour. To grow, Dare needed to differentiate in both positioning and target market.

We noticed two trends;

Firstly, younger blue-collar workers weren’t associating themselves with traditional alpha-male stereotypes.

Secondly, the need for a pick-me-up was growing among younger white-collar workers – people who wanted to feel on top of things, but increasingly struggled to do so because they felt mentally overloaded.

Competitors focused on physical strength while ignoring the broader audience’s need for mental strength. Owning a more modern, mental pick-me-up would help Dare stand out and attract new users.

To turn Dare into the habitual choice, we followed a behavioural model designed by Charles Duhigg called The Habit Loop.

It starts with a cue.

That cue triggers a routine.

And that routine delivers a reward.

Drinking a Dare was to become the routine, and feeling mentally switched on, the reward.

And the cue? Those moments when you lack mental clarity; when your brain starts to fade and you make silly mistakes.

In short: whenever you’re not thinking straight.

This strategy’s been awarded one Grand and one Gold Effie.

Attitudinal results:

Dare’s Total Brand Awareness increased almost every year between 2010 – 2018. Consideration grew from 15% in 2011 to 72% in 2018. The association with mental alertness grew exponentially, and our campaign ranked in the top 3% of best performing ads in BrainJuicer’s global database in 2018.

Behavioural results:

Penetration almost doubled over a five-year period, from 913,000 people in 2011 to 1.65 million in 2016. In 2018, Dare was consumed in 1.7 million households.

Business results:

Dare grew by 370% in sales volume over nine years. By May 2012, Dare had become the market leader in Australian iced coffee, and kept gaining market share as Ice Break declined.

Over Dare’s eight-year campaign effort, leading brands in the category declined (V Energy, Coca-Cola and Ice Break) or stayed stable (Red Bull), while Dare doubled its market share.