Branded content is an emerging category in Australia. Being a smaller market with relatively cheaper media, broadcast product sponsorship & placement is more accessible. This is good and bad. If the media is cheaper, it can be undervalued, leading to under-investment in the creative integration, correspondingly creating a somewhat average consumer experience.

We wanted to step above this mêlée and create something consumers would enjoy and find genuinely useful. Whilst budget constraints ruled out broadcast content, digital media was both on budget, and gave us a better opportunity for content integration and better control of the consumer experience. In Australia there are no preclusions to branded content or product integration.

The PR campaign was phased over two periods, initially focusing on the music and secondly on the science behind the music. Each tranche of activity targeted different press providing depth to the story and reach to the activity. Two weeks prior to launch a PR pack was sent to influential music bloggers and journalists. Each pack included a branded iPod with the four ZoneLab music tracks. Traditional and online interviews were completed focusing on the artists’ involvement and how they developed music to the scientific brief. The second PR phase launched consecutively with the main campaign. Its focus was on the science underpinning the experiments, leveraging Professor Terry and his sports psychology credentials. This phase targeted mainstream consumer press in both traditional and online environments. The PR phases ran as planned but we up-weighted our focus on the science inherent within the campaign – it proved to be very newsworthy.

Client Success: Our task was to persuade Australians to drink more Mizone. With 71% less media budget, Mizone achieved a year on year sales increase of 35%, scoring the highest monthly sales figure in 3 years.Consumer Success: The ZoneLab created music that was scientifically proven to be more motivating. Our consumers agreed. Over 35,000 people visited the ZoneLab, spending a total of 74,083 minutes watching the films or sampling the ZoneLab music. Our Facebook following increased from 700 to over 10,500 (with no 'like' gate) and the Australian press loved the story – our PR activity generated 6,012,105 media impressions.