Sprite is a top-three carbonated beverage in Mainland China, but the brand had been losing share to an aggressive venture-backed newcomer who outspends Sprite nearly 3:1. We needed to build back Sprite's refreshment brand edge and establish distinctive consumption occasions via a ritual-building campaign would recruit new drinkers and drive weekly+ consumption.

As China experienced its warmest summer on record and onerous COVID-19 restrictions further magnified the annoyances of daily life, it was the perfect time to launch Sprite’s new global brand proposition “Heat Happens, Stay Cool” to achieve our goals.

Real-time data was at the heart of Sprite’s “Heat Happens, Stay Cool” campaign success. At the insights stage, social listening data pointed us towards the most relevant and scalable heat moments. Then, we explored various data signals – location-based, behavioural, contextual – with media partners to turn our ambitious strategy into a dynamic digital media plan that could be precisely activated in real-time. Furthermore, these data informed the development of our creative assets and messages. Brought together, real-time media activation and relevant messaging drove far higher engagement than the same placement using a generic message, in fact one Sprite real-time placement in a ride-hailing app had a CTR of 19.5% vs. 1.2% CTR on average for other brands activating in the same spot.

We kept millions of consumers cool this summer as they scooped up Sprite coupons and reached for Sprite at the shelf to beat the heat!

Our real-time marketing campaign built back Sprite’s brand edge as the most refreshing flavored sparkling beverage as measured by pre- and post-campaign brand health surveys. By activating with precision and relevance at the ‘moment of truth’, we grew Sprite’s bottom line: we expanded the brand’s weekly+ drinker base, drove 1.4X trials versus the previous summer, grew year-on-year sales, all ahead of campaign targets.

Our contextual interventions to establish clear and distinctive consumption occasions resonated with consumers who engaged with our real-time data-led media activations at levels well beyond our 2021 summer campaign and ahead of industry benchmarks:

• Media ROI: 193

• 5.3 billion impressions

• 18 million coupons

• 6.7 million redemptions

• 37% redemption rate (over 10 points higher than previous campaigns)