This is an unusual case, with an unusual solution.

It's the case of a category leader that had to tackle head-on some very negative press about the category, which was hitting it hard in terms of sales and consumer perception. The solution: influence the influencers, and in doing so, create a story the influencers themselves would telegraph to the consumer on our behalf. Hence changing the fortunes of the brand.

Lucozade Sport leads the UK Sports Drinks category, but in 2012 it faced a serious challenge. A joint investigation by the BBC and the British Medical Journal, which was widely reported in the media, threw doubt on to the efficacy of the sports drinks category. As market leader, the Lucozade Sport brand suffered, seeing decline in both sales and brand equities over the next two years.

The 2014 FIFA World Cup offered an opportunity to repair the reputation of the brand.

Ahead of the World Cup, it became very evident that there was a ‘Fact Gap’. The conditions for playing football in Brazil were wildly different to those that the England Squad were used to, and people did not know how the players would cope with the heat and humidity. But journalists lacked concrete facts. The Lucozade Sport strategy was to step into the conversation to inform it and therefore to own it.

The creative solution was to fill this ‘Fact Gap’. Not with celebrity endorsement, or a traditional advertising campaign, but by using the majority of the brand’s spend to create a unique experience; the Lucozade Conditions Zone. The Lucozade Conditions Zone was a full-sized football pitch in a building in London, which was carefully created to replicate the exact heat and humidity of Brazil. Opinion formers and grassroots players were brought in to play football matches and, as they did, data was collected about their physical performance and the impact the tropical conditions had on them.

In this way, Lucozade Sport leveraged its scientific credentials and dovetailed them with a cultural conversation, to create valuable and relevant content for the influencers. Journalists shared the concrete data in mass media with consumers, with the brand itself at the heart of the story.

The result? The Lucozade Conditions Zone experience allowed the brand to reassert its authority, regain its credibility and to do it in a way that was unique to the brand. And all this led to an increase in penetration, growth in sales – in dramatic contrast to the downward trends of a declining category.