Minute Maid is supporting its new Simply Orange brand with an online sweepstake competition.
Coca-Cola’s Minute Maid subsidiary has launched a new juice brand called Simply Orange. The brand is being launched initially in the northeastern US, which accounts for 33% of US orange juice consumption. The focus of the branding is on the product’s purity, using the strapline 100% Unfooled Around With. Distribution is being initially focused on New England, New York, Washington and Philadelphia.
As well as advertising through conventional media such as television and point-of-sale, Minute Maid is also heavily promoting Simply Orange online. With the northeastern region having some of the highest Internet penetration rates in the country, this strategy seems sound. The site combines product information with a storefinder to maximize product visibility. The main feature of the site is a sweepstake competition in which consumers can win trips to Montana, Hawaii, Utah and Alaska – destinations chosen for the purity of their environment and natural beauty, attributes which the company believes fit well with the brand image.
The main purpose of the competition is to harvest email addresses, mailing addresses and phone numbers to give the company an online mailing database. The competition also invites surfers to provide feedback into their last 10 juice purchases, their age and income, providing the company with valuable insight into the attributes and behaviors of its consumer base.
Ray Crockett, Director of Communications at Minute Maid said The website doesn’t stand by itself. It will do well if it supports and is supported by other elements. This ties in with the growing awareness in fast-moving consumer goods marketing that online offerings must be fully integrated with offline campaigns. In the earlier days of the web, brands such as Ballantine’s pursued radically different on- and offline strategies, almost invariably with poor results. Full integration using the Simply Orange model is likely to become increasingly common across the drinks markets.
