Minute Maid’s orange juice is a well-established product in its sector. But with not much room for innovation in the juice category, even the most traditional brand can become lost in the cluttered industry of soft drinks. Minute Maid Orange Juice with Vitamin D comes in as an opportunity to create differentiation — even more so when two widely known facts are connected: the predominance of ready-made juices in cities and the lack of vitamin D in those areas. As urban populations spend more time indoors, they get less contact with the sun — the usual source of vitamin D — and today, over 50% of the global population have vitamin D insufficiency (The New England Journal of Medicine). A problem that is increasing as cities grow more and more — around 56% of the world population now live in urban areas (United Nations).

As a traditional brand, Minute Maid has launched conventional advertising over the decades. To achieve the differentiation proposed in our brief, we put a twist on this norm, hijacking traditional urban media to create an OOH campaign inspired by an out-of-home star:the sun. This creates a parallel between sunlight and our product’s benefit. First, we relied on apartments that are deprived of sunlight because of tall, new buildings around them. Nearby, we ran billboards printed on a mirrored surface. At a certain time of the day, the sunlight was reflected on these apartments’ windows, creating a surprising effect seen by passersby. Then, we mapped out billboards that block the sunlight in public spaces. There, we ran “empty” panels—a frame open to the sky. Lastly, we ran bus shelter ads that came with a built-in seat. People then waited for their bus while enjoying some sunlight from the shelter’s cutout ceiling.

Minute Maid is the juice of urban families. It’s a part of people’s lives, especially during breakfast. That’s why it was so powerful to have a campaign that addresses the contrast between life indoors (away from the sun) and outdoors. We wanted to show how an orange juice that is known by everyone can now offer your home one of the “outdoor benefits” that families are missing: vitamin D.

The lack of vitamin D in urban populations is a fact as global as our brand’s audience. And that’s why the approach of this campaign didn’t stop with the activation on-site. This was designed from the beginning to generate video and photo content that was run worldwide in different Minute Maid key markets.

The three acts of this project ran on different days throughout a month. We identified places with high traffic of passersby, together with the specific targets of our panels — either near dark apartments or in public spaces that had the sunlight blocked by conventional billboards. The whole campaign was filmed, from the installation of the billboards to passersby’s reactions, including interviews with the once-dark apartments’ residents. This was all turned into a series of content — video and photo — that was launched by the brand as paid media on social platforms and adapted in different markets.

Our ads generated approximately 2 Million impacts on the billboard areas. Not only sparking a conversation about the importance of vitamin D, but also jumping on the debate about the shadow impact of buildings in big global metropolis, while spreading a functional message that people could actually feel on their skin. The project has generated spontaneous media coverage, and new markets are planning to run the campaign in the following months.

This project was also the first one within the brand’s new global platform, “Filled With Life.” It was launched at the same time as the new platform, and Minute Maid’s global marketing team plans to leverage our content until early 2024 — when the new platform’s implementation will be fully done — as a way to bring more attention to the whole brand in its new phase.