Native
When it was time for this P&G-owned clean deodorant company to expand their portfolio (by three entirely new product categories) we led the creative charge to make sure it sold like hotcakes instead of hot pits.
Services
Brand Identity & Internal Brand Standards, New Product Launch, Tagline, Web Copy, SMS Campaign, OOH Advertising, Digital Advertising, Press Release, Email Campaigns, Product Descriptions, Blogs, Sales & Promotional Emails, Social Content, Podcast Advertising
The Backstory
It’s a tale as old as time: a creative agency records themselves real-time brainstorming about a natural deodorant brand, the Senior Vice President of the brand emails the creative agency saying she loved their ‘Brad Pitt’s pits,’ joke, the brand hires the agency for a complete rebrand, major product line expansion, and the creation of every single seasonal launch that calendar year—culminating in a long, sweet-smelling relationship. The rest, as they say, is history. In case you can’t pass the sniff test and don’t know who Native is, they are a brand in the Procter & Gamble family that makes personal care products that are as notable for their non-toxic effectiveness as they are for their proprietary fragrances.
Foundational Branding
Ah, the sweet smell of a rebrand. Native came a-knockin’ on our door because their brand voice & message needed to be heightened and tightened. We infused our magic touch into tone specifications, language systems, humor devices, and persona in order to craft a unique, cohesive brand voice that would help them rise above the noise of the clean product category (one they themselves invented, but that is now quite saturated).
We relied on that fresh, new brand voice to revitalize nearly every consumer touchpoint and create a distinctly entertaining user experience—we’re talking overhauling everything from the entirety of the website copy, to point of sale UX messaging, to the full catalog of product descriptions, to promotional, nurture, & winback emails, to internal brand standards, to tagline, to infinity and beyond. Did someone say increased brand awareness, engagement, and loyalty? Hard to hear ya over their hordes of fans screaming their name.
National Campaign
Pumpkin spice latte gets roasted
How do you get all eyes on your garden-variety product launch? You do the unexpected and kick things off with an anti-launch. After 4 years of releasing their seasonal, Pumpkin Spice Latte fragrance every fall, we created a playful campaign to retire it…allowing that buzz to also drum up excitement for the new fall products that were dropping in its place. Ooh, disruptive!
Phase 1: Campaign Conceptualization
Before a single creative asset was developed, we were hard at work behind the scenes to coming up with the #PumpkinSpiceLatteGetsRoasted concept and bringing it to life. Similar to how we discussed approaching your (Drizly) campaign, we engaged in a full conceptualization phase for the campaign in order to land on the funniest, sharpest central idea that would be best suited to tackle those campaign objectives. We developed and presented two creative campaign concepts for Native to consider—including things like sample assets, audience appeal, and creative potential for each concept. This allowed Native to discuss it internally as a team, weigh any pros and cons, and select the direction they felt was the strongest. The winner? “Roasting” Pumpkin Spice Latte via a comedy roast. (Don’t make us point out how roast is also a coffee term; making this a chef’s kiss of a campaign concept since the new products were all coffeehaus themed.) Native embraced this incredibly silly campaign concept with open underarms and wanted us to develop the campaign assets as well—kicking us onto Phase 2.
Phase 2: Asset Development
Pardon our French but Wowie Zowie that's a lot of assets
- The New York Times print ad
- Comedic Press Releases
- Catalog of Roast Jokes (And subsequent Hot Takes for the new products)
- Landing Page
- Promotional Emails
- SMS Campaign
- Product Descriptions
- Website Copy
- Social Ads
- Social Videos
The Sunday before the comedy roast officially began, the campaign kicked off with a full-page ad we conceptualized and wrote that ran in the friggin’ The New York Times. (Due to the nature and size of the ad, we also engaged in a mini conceptualization phase for this specific asset in order to determine the most eye-catching, entertaining, intriguing central idea.)
The next day, we promoted the ‘Roast Jokes’ across email, SMS, and social, inviting the masses to submit their own and play along. We published a satirical press release that personified the Pumpkin Spice Latte fragrance as an artist who was retiring (our favorite parts are tied with the Michael Jordan reference and the Jack O’ Lantern statement needing to be read after dark). The stunt went on for two weeks leading up to the new product launch of Coffeehaus fragrances.
Our spicy little #PumpkinSpiceLatteGetsRoasted campaign was picked up by AdWeek who called it a “playful,” “snarky sendoff,” and The Drum also covered it and described the campaign as “entertaining” “fanfare.”
Beyond the juicy, earned media, customer engagement, and increased opt-ins, the campaign perfectly paved the way for a remarkably successful launch of Native’s Coffeehaus collection—which rolled out with each new fragrance being promoted via “Hot Takes”: playful jabs thrown at PSL from their perspective. We also handled all of the launch assets (website copy, SMS campaign, promotional emails, fragrance descriptions, press release, hot takes, social ads, social videos).
At the end of the day, the only group of people who were not pleased with the campaign launch and content performance were the diehard, PSL scent-heads whose pits won’t get to smell like pumpkins this year.
And we’re perfectly okay with that.
Special Campaigns
Naturally, our long-standing relationship with Native included other seasonal product launches and special campaigns. We ideated entertaining, surprising, memorable concepts and developed them into full-scale, multi-platform campaigns that resulted in earned media, brand notoriety, and consumer conversion. And, yes, we did all of that masterful creative work without ever breaking a sweat.
