Title	IMA & MALIBU RUM - #THECOCONUTCHALLENGE INFLUENCER MARKETING CAMPAIGN
Brand	THE ABSOLUT COMPANY - MALIBU RUM
Product/Service	MALIBU RUM
Category	E05. Influencer / Talent
Entrant	INFLUENCER MARKETING AGENCY B.V. Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS
Idea Creation	VIRTUE Copenhagen, DENMARK
Idea Creation 2	MALIBU Stockholm, SWEDEN
Production	INFLUENCER MARKETING AGENCY B.V. Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS
Production 2	MALIBU Stockholm, SWEDEN

Name	Company	Position
Maddie Raedts	IMA - Influencer Marketing Agency	Brand Partnerships Director
Cedric Brunings	IMA - Influencer Marketing Agency	Head of Brand Partnerships
Grace Dowling	IMA - Influencer Marketing Agency	Brand Partnerships Manager
Jasmina Toivonen	IMA - Influencer Marketing Agency	Campaign and Influencer Manager
Guy Moore	IMA - Influencer Marketing Agency	Influencer Developer
Nathalie Van Kenhove	IMA - Influencer Marketing Agency	Senior Digital Marketing Specialist
Pien Kramps	IMA - Influencer Marketing Agency	Global Legal Counsel & Privacy Officer
Johan Radowjevski	Malibu	VP Global Marketing
Monica Jungbeck	Malibu	Global Senior Marketing Manager
Anna Kjellmark	Malibu	Senior Brand Manager
Galya Korukchyan	Malibu	Brand Manager
Arnaud Malinconi	Malibu	Strategy Director
Rich Perusi	Virtue	Creative Director
Trine Qvistgaard	Vritue	Assistant Creative Director
Dimitri Paiva	Virtue	Creative
Kristoffer Björkman	Virtue	Senior Copywriter
Tone Jacobsen	Virtue	Designer
Vicky Chen	Virtue	Strategy Director
Heidi Baltzer	Virtue	Head of Production Northern Europe
Simone Quistgaard	Virtue	Business Director
Lisa Maria Schmid	Virtue	Account Director
Mette Rolighed	Virtue	Senior Account Manager
Clara Lucie	Virtue	Project Manager
Alex Smith	Virtue	Freelance Digital Producer
Asbjørn Munk	Virtue	Production Manager
Katrine Filt	Virtue	Post Producer
Max Siegal	Virtue	Senior Editor
Megan Horan	Virtue	Talent Manager
Bonnie Reilly	Virtue	Talent Manager
Francois Pablo Andrivet	Virtue	Digital Art Director
Florian Paul Kraut	Virtue	Senior Activation Manager

Background

Following the successful 2019 influencer campaign marked by an epic event, the client wanted to keep their brand relevant and top of mind during the summer season by making their 2020 influencer event bigger and better than ever before. The campaign objectives were: 1) Reinforce the brand’s identity of summer spirits and fun; 2) Create quality content which portrays authentic connections, vibrant imagery and storytelling moments; 3) Create product buzz by hijacking key moments throughout summer with tropical, relevant and fun content; 4) Engage consumers by reacting quickly to emerging trends. However, due to the current global situation and the COVID-19 outbreak, the event couldn’t happen as planned and the strategy quickly had to be pivoted to a 100% online activation. And what resonates more on the internet of today than a viral dance routine? Here’s how we made it happen.

Describe the strategy

Our consumer data and insights showed that TikTok usage exploded during COVID-19 and that viral dance challenges became a trend - also on other social channels. With this in mind, the brand commissioned a remix of the 2010 hit song “Da Coconut Nut” to become the 2020 Summer sensation in association with the brand. To amplify exposure, the influencer campaign sourced a professional choreographer to create the dance routine for #TheCoconutChallenge. Through a multi-tier and cross-channel strategy, influencers would replicate the dance moves, give it their own twist, and promote the challenge on social media encouraging their community to recreate the original choreography themselves and join the fun. The strategy was designed to reach the target audience - fun starters between 21 to 34 years old worldwide. In addition, a variety of specific influencer personas enabled the campaign to extend the reach of the message to a niche audience.

Describe the execution

After the choreography was completed, seven global influencers were invited to replicate the dance routine for the challenge and give their own twist on how to bring it to life. One celebrity influencer (18.4M followers), one professional choreographer (3.7M followers), and two macros (850K average followers) spread the challenge and engaged thousands of people, while 3 niche amplifiers (15K average followers) enabled the campaign to reach a niche audience of mixologists. Together with 50 brand ambassadors participating in the total campaign, the global influencers created authentic content that resonated with the target audience and was also appropriate to the current health crisis. Because the campaign promoted an alcohol brand, the creators hosted the challenge on older-audience-platforms, Instagram and YouTube, supported by Facebook and Twitter, to further promote the challenge. In September, the music video was released featuring the influencers’ content and all the UGC posted across various social channels.

List the results

The campaign reached 13.2M impressions (+20% of target), 522.8K engagements (+26% of target), and an engagement rate of 5.6% (+0.6% of target), confirming the buzz created around the product and the challenge. +62% of the campaign posts were earned (which the influencers were not contracted for), reflecting the campaign relevancy to the influencers. The influencer campaign was able to successfully engage audiences worldwide and, with its high-quality content, reinforce the brand’s fun and upbeat identity by tapping into a trend already popular among the target audience and boosted by COVID-19: dance challenges. The influencer activation generated over 1,000 user-generated Instagram posts using the hashtag, as well as over 118,000 views on UGC TikTok content. The influencer activation was also essential in the general campaign’s total results, that gathered 4,3M song streams and 88,7M video views in total, and helped the brand more than double its share of voice.