The Mercury Cider Tough Tap—if you’re tough enough to pour it, you’re tough enough to drink it. The hard-to-pour cider tap was installed in the toughest pubs, bars and events across Australia in the ultimate challenge of toughness.   

We launched the campaign with online films that challenged men on their masculinity, inviting them to see if they had what it takes to drink Mercury. Some of Australia’s toughest were invited to put themselves to the test using the Tough Tap, including the world’s greatest ever athlete—21x world woodchopping champion, David Foster.

As patrons attempted to pour themselves a free cider, an animated GIF was automatically created and shared on social media, and their results were added to a national leaderboard—in search for Australia’s toughest person, state, pub and football team.

We launched the campaign with a series of short online films that questioned the modern man’s masculinity, and challenged them to see if they had what it takes to drink Mercury Cider by trying to pour cider from the Tough Tap. The tap was then installed at some of Australia’s toughest pubs, bars and events across the country.

When people pulled on the tap, a camera was triggered that automatically captured an animated GIF of the patron’s attempt, which was shared online. Their pour attempt was also rated, and their score was added to a national leaderboard to determine the toughest regions, pubs, people and sporting clubs in the country.

The Mercury Cider Tough Tap campaign consisted of large scale ambient media, television, radio, and social films and content across Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube.

The Tough Tap campaign lead to a Mercury Masterbrand increase in volume of 26.7% for the campaign as compared to the same time period in the previous year. The Mercury Hard Cider variant grew at 60% for the quarter and the Mercury Genuine Draught variant turned around years of decline, with the brand growing at 22%.

The campaign reached over 15 million men aged 18–40 and resonated highly with this target audience, recording a +23 pts lift in ad recall, +8 pts lift in brand awareness +5 pts lift in favorability—well ahead of industry benchmarks. A YouTube brand uplift study categorized all six brand films as ‘best in class’ for creative performance and the Brand Awareness for creative in this channel specifically saw a +5.2pts lift (25% percentile).

Tough Tap is now rolling out into Australia’s toughest sports stadiums at major sports event throughout 2017.