Lelentle Legalatladi is a media account director and strategist at iProspect South Africa, a partner agency of the global firm Dentsu, which works on the marketing strategies of some of South Africa’s biggest beverage brands.
How might a beer brand encapsulate the feeling of a music festival through a smartphone? For Corona, connecting customers to its annual Sunsets Festival World Tour meant finding a creative, innovative way to meet both beer and music lovers where they’re at.
We were tasked with achieving Corona’s marketing goals for the Cape Town leg of the festival in South Africa — one of the brand’s most important annual promotional events.
We derived three main objectives for its marketing strategy: Awareness of the festival, awareness of the Corona brand, and promoting ticket sales. Here’s how we reached more than five million viewers.
Using video views as a conversion driver
The first step was finding the most suitable platform to engage with music lovers and festival goers. We also had to be mindful of the fact that some short-form video platforms do not allow alcohol advertising, which steered us to platforms that not only allow alcohol marketing but the ability to create “swipeable content” – a driver of ticket sales.
This led us to experiment with advertising formats that would drive both reach and demand, while also keeping costs low.
We knew that Corona was keen to try something different to its previously-used strategy centred around long-form video. We started by A/B testing a number of different ad lengths and formats to see what worked best: For example, we were able to use a horizontal format for the video with YouTube Shorts, which piqued our interest, but not with bumper ads.
The reach and engagement of this particular creative was higher on Shorts than on bumper or in-stream ads, which led us to run a predominantly short-form campaign.
With the most effective format in place, we sought to bring in the most suitable creative elements, which featured some of South Africa’s top musicians such as Majozi, Good Luck, Msaki, and Sun El Musician.
Creatively, Corona wanted beer lovers and festival goers to associate its product with the sunset — that energy and atmosphere of the last golden hour of a summer’s day.
Corona’s head of brand, Melanie Nicholson, explains: “Our decision to feature these artists in our creative was motivated by their association with the festival and their signature soulful sound and garner recognition for the event.”
The team incorporated illustrative elements like the outdoors, sunset colours such as soft yellows and blues, and relaxing music, to showcase a disconnection from the hustle and bustle and create a sense of togetherness and community.
Using multiple formats to boost awareness, reach, and demand
Our partner agency Dentsu Performance implemented the digital campaign, different formats to reach users across platforms and at different stages of the consumer journey:
- Bumper ads, six seconds in length, allowed Corona to increase initial awareness
- TrueView ads helped to ensure reach and deep dive into the festival
- YouTube Shorts campaign to stimulate ticket sales in the consideration phase, curating the message and call to action
Our approach enabled Corona to showcase the full line-up for the event using affinity audiences, a method to raise awareness and drive consideration among similar groups of YouTube users with a stronger interest in the subject. This ensured that we were reaching the most relevant users.
In just one month, views reached 1.3 million, impressions soared to 5.1 million and the video completion rate reached 21.2%.
Three takeaways for making the most of short-form videos:
- Experiment with different formats and ad lengths until you find the right formula
- Choose a key metric, such as reach or engagement, and base your campaign on achieving that, instead of trying to hit multiple metrics.
- Due to the nature of quick swipeable content, ensure your branding appears early and clearly with key information about the event and stand-out names in music.
