Who: Nestea, Juliet, Carat, Soft Citizen and Grayson Matthews.
What: A new campaign, “Keeping it real since forever.”
When & Where: The campaign broke in mid-May, with a media buy from Carat that includes Instagram and cinema pre-roll, as well as a pair of ads airing on the pop and hip-hop channels on Spotify’s free tier.
Why: Nestea was beginning to lose relevancy with young adults who perceived it as “artificial and outdated,” despite being made with real tea, said Laura Cutsey, director brewed beverages with The Coca-Cola Company in Toronto. “We needed a campaign that could break through the clutter and build both functional and emotional relevancy with young adults.”
How: Advertising has long imbued products with powers they don’t really possess. Unilever built Axe/Lynx into a $1 billion brand with advertising suggesting that it could help even the geekiest teen attract the fairer sex.
The Nestea campaign is built around people who face challenges: a guy who’s too scared to approach the girl; someone who wants to become a singing star but is too afraid of stepping on stage; a fan desperate to score tickets to see their favourite rapper in concert. They all reach for a bottle of Nestea and… it fails to solve their problem.
“Here’s the truth: Nestea is made with real tea and is a really refreshing and delicious drink. That’s it,” said Cutsey. “It’s not going to help you get the girl. Or ace the test. Or solve all your problems. But it will quench your thirst in really big way.
“We wanted to be real about that fact because we know the generation we’re talking to have little patience for artifice. Honest work, works.”
The country-inspired music that soundtracks the spots is performed by Toronto indie artist Andrew Austin, who released his latest album, Starts and Fits, earlier this year.
Juliet used Austin, a composer/songwriter with Toronto’s Grayson Matthews, to record a bunch of demo tracks to sell the idea to Nestea’s brand team and ultimately included him in the final version, said Juliet co-founder and chief creative officer, Ryan Spellicsy. “We made all these songs and went in and hit play, and everyone was laughing. [Austin’s] voice became the voice, because it was that good.”
