Gerolsteiner is the leading water brand in Germany. But it’s almost inexistent in Belgium.It wasn't easy to find Gerolsteiner in Belgium. It was only available at one retailer, and even there it was very difficult to find. The brand hadn't communicated since years, the awareness was very low (4%), and some people even mixed it up with the other German brand: ‘Tonissteiner.’ We needed urgently to promote the brand again.

We had to do something about our brand name awareness, and we took it quite literally. We found out nobody in Belgium was named ‘Gerolsteiner’. So we launched a simple, but challenging competition: The first person who officially changes his name to “Gerolsteiner’ receives a Porsche 911. All the used channels were informative and had the same message “Change your name in Gerolsteiner and win a Porsche 911. Go on gerolsteiner.be.” We used internet seeding, radio and communication in bars to launch the competition.

The spontaneous awareness increased from 8 to 20%.The likability of the campaign reached 78% when the average in the water sector is 45%.Thanks to one blog, 100 other blogs and website reporter de competition. All the national newspapers and radio station reported the competition and wanted to interview some participants. Even our neighbours, France & the Netherlands noticed the campaign.

In 10 days 15.000 people clicked on the website, and 300 persons officially subscribed to the competition. We selected 200 of them and we are paying all their administration fees. Now let’s wait to see who will be the first.

This is a relevant idea because we started from a product truth. We realized that the weakness of being almost inexistent is strength. Gerolsteiner is a rare water brand and we would use it as a competitive advantage. The name is not known and even rare and from there came the idea. Our main competitors are spending a lot of money in TV, we don’t have that money. Again we made from our weakness as a strength. We generated more likability than the average of the sector, thanks to an original idea and an original implementation.