Here on the blog, I often spend a lot of time discussing YMC’s use of digital tools for marketing brands to a Gen-Y crowd. Because I’m fascinated by emerging trends in interactive marketing, I’m always chiming in with my opinion about the success (and failure) of recent digital campaigns. Gen-Y lives and breathes digital, so I make it a point to be right there with them — even if that means tweeting like there’s no tomorrow. (As I’ve said a few thousand times now, if you’re one of the Tweeting Millions, you can connect with me there; I’m @paul_himmelfarb.)
But YMC’s first love is experiential marketing — physical, on-the-ground events that get students engaged with brands in an authentic way. We’ve just wrapped up the Spring Break season, and we’ve compiled a video that documents the work we’ve done with ROCKSTAR Energy Drink on the beaches and nightclubs of the world’s best spring break spots. This is our second year working with ROCKSTAR, and we saw some really great numbers this season: per-destination impressions increased by a pretty dramatic 312%. In total, ROCKSTAR generated an estimated 1.3 million impressions, and got about 60,000 cans-in-hands from the Spring Break portion of the annual program. This all was designed to run in tandem with the on-campus campaign that I mentioned in the post last week.
But the numbers alone don’t do justice to the campaign — this campaign was all about creating the ROCKSTAR atmosphere, about bringing the brand to life. And whether it was at the beach, a night club, a pool-side bar or a concert, we did just that. Check out the video below and see the campaign in all its energy-drink-fueled glory.
As I mentioned in Tuesday’s post, last week saw some of the best minds in youth marketing flock to San Francisco’s temperate confines for YPulse’s 2009 Youth Marketing MashUp. Our very own Carisa Natvig, youth marketer extraordinaire, was there and in fine form. As I shared in my post, she gave a excellent overview of YMC’s work for ROCKSTAR Energy Drinks on college campuses throughout the country.
The immortal and indispensable YPulse has recently added a post that links to the many, many blogs that covered the event. If you couldn’t make it out to San Fran, this is the next best thing.
This week, from June 1st to June 2nd, marketing luminaries from around the country flocked to San Francisco for YPulse’s Youth Marketing Mashup. The conference, which featured keynote talks from MTV Network’s Kate Connally, Disney Online’s Paul Yanover and the author Donna Fenn, covered every conceivable corner of the youth marketing world (as evidenced by the overflowing schedule). But if you were one of those who couldn’t make it out to the city on the bay, don’t dispair! YPulse’s conference also happens to be an exceedingly well-documented affair. Navigate your way to the conferences stand-alone site, and feast on the wealth of content — live blogs, transcripts and video streaming abound.
Not only was our very own Carisa Natvig there, but she spoke to the conference about the work YMC has done for ROCKSTAR Energy Drinks. Over the course of her talk, Carisa walked through the ways that YMC has used student reps to integrate ROCKSTAR into the day and life of college students nationwide. She reported a total of 13 million program impressions — which is definitely a number we’re proud of.
Because we love sharing, here’s a short slideshow we produced to help Carisa tell ROCKSTAR’s story. And believe it or not, all of the photos used were taken by our student reps, often with just their camera phones — it doesn’t get more authentic than that.
