Lion Nathan has a 52% share of the $200m+ NZ beer market that's become increasingly competitive. Speight's (the best selling and oldest beer in NZ) strength is in the rural South Island whilst growth is increasingly from North Island's urban markets. Our challenge: Make Speight's relevant to drinkers in cities but remain true to its Southern values: Generosity of spirit, Mateship and 'can-do' attitude. Make a favourite traditional beer relevant today, creating talkability & regaining momentum lost to competitors. The big idea: create a legend - a few ordinary NZ blokes taking a Speight's pub to London to deliver Speight's to NZ mates abroad. The media budget had to make the idea credible, engaging, contagious and talked about. Our media insight was simple: Legends are created by people not advertising agencies. So, we formed collaborative media partnerships to deliver credible communication within newsworthy editorial away from advertising ghettos.

Regained position as NZ's biggest selling beer - $2.5m free editorial coverage, 300% more than the media budget - double digit increase in Brand Adoration (all other mainstream beers declined) - 70,000+ unique website visitors - 60,000 entries 'to be a crew member' promotion.

We re-allocated the media budget from a traditional media approach into a multi-layered Communication budget. We created momentum through heavy upfront expenditure & convinced media partners that the campaign was truly newsworthy. Conventional placement of our $750k budget across an 8 month period would have failed. Our media partnership approach delivered credibility and sustained engagement: - weekly coverage on NZ's only nightly primetime sports programme - monthly reporting on NZ's No.1 national peak time news - comprehensive coverage in the leading national newspaper - Breakfast radio feeds across 3 stations in the biggest radio network The campaign was split into 6 phases to maintain interest and engage consumers using a wide media mix that let content appear as news as it happened. The budget was used to create content for editorial, supported by minimal advertising expenditure - a brave and unconventional, but highly successful consumer engagement strategy.

Investing heavily in a limited number of media partnerships paid dividends: Idea Launch -TV, radio and newspaper editorial.

Crew Recruitment - multiple job adverts in newspaper employment sections - on-line/ on-air promotions for 5 places on the boat.

Boat Launch - Live onboard radio broadcasts - coverage on the main national TV news - editorial in the leading daily newspaper - newspaper pull-out 'Farewell' poster to wave as the boat left NZ.

The Journey -16 weekly 2 minute segments in a TV programme - On-line weekly video/news streams from the boat to encourage real time, direct engagement - Daily radio DJ updates & a promotion to win a place on the boat Arrival celebrations - News coverage, TV, radio, press and on-line - 4 page newspaper wrap (leading national title) - Iconic one hour documentary (Sky TV). In total, 8 months TV, radio, press and on-line coverage despite our limited budget.