During all the past editions of the Rugby World Cup, Orangina, the French fizzy orange soft drink, was the official sponsor of the Rugby French National Team. But for the last edition, the entry fees became way too high for our budget due to the addition of a global beer brand as a premium sponsor, with an aggressive media strategy to be perceived as the only drink associated with the rugby world cup.

We were looking for an idea that was strongly linked with Rugby to celebrate our link with this sport. We had to do this without being able to use the assets available for sponsors and without being able to buy any media space related with rugby during the world cup in France…

We had a close look at our fizzy, orange based Orangina… And realised that as the bubbles of our drinks are always moving with our pulp, they are always slightly deformed, which makes them slightly oval instead of perfectly round. Oval, exactly like the shape of a rugby ball.

We had our idea, which was as simple as it was crazy: add on all our cans of Orangina that our drink contains… oval bubbles.

We produced 4 million cans, put them in stores, and didn’t mention it anywhere.

We just waited for people to discover them and to react online. Their reactions quickly exceeded our expectations : some people were surprised, other were amused, others took it seriously and looked for a scientific demonstration… but everybody was intrigued and talked about us and our brand new old drink, looking for our cans to taste “the difference” with our regular ones…

Orangina is a French fizzy soda brand made of real oranges and real pulp: the drink is better when they are mixed. As “shaking” was important to us, “shake the world” became our brand tagline. And sponsoring rugby teams for years was relevant (as the rugby is the one sport in Europe that shakes its players) too.

As our sponsorship contract ended, we needed to keep being associated with rugby in the heart of our fans, with the same kind of “shaken” idea that they used to expect from us before (Orangina is well known in France for its weird but popular ads).

So how can you talk about Rugby without being able to say that you are linked with Rugby during the Rugby world cup? By having a close look at our bubbles, and presenting them in a new way to our audiences : our bubbles are not

We didn’t want to make our idea sound like a copywriting twist, but like a real, proper innovation. That is why we slightly twisted the packaging of our cans to add a new element “ With Slightly Oval Bubbles “, produce 4 000 000 of them, and did not brag about it online at all.

Our plan was to spread them progressively to French supermarkets all across the country months before the world cup, so that people perceived these drinks as real, not promotional.

As the brand did not say or post anything about these oval bubbles editions offline and online, people looked for an answer (is it real or not ?) that they couldn’t find on our side. So they did what everybody does when Google does not give you an immediate answer: they posted our cans on social networks.

- 4000 000 cans produced

- All sold out in three weeks before the tournament

- Most successful direct conversion (+71%) and conversational (+435% mentions offline) brand activation ever for the brand during a sport event… despite not being an official sponsor of this event for the first time.

- Sold out in France but requested to collect and taste our “brand new” old Orangina came from 23 countries across 5 continents.

- Some of our cans even ended online on auction websites and were sold for more than ten times their originally value.