In 2023, Schweppes launched their brand perspective, "Born Social," encouraging people to embrace their inherent social nature. The Social Sound is an audio-driven experience allowing people to live this philosophy. This experience intercepted the public during a moment of antisocial behaviour (when they were blocking out the world with noise-canceling headphones). Using this antisocial device and with the help from a popular musician, it then guided them off social media to an innovative spatial audio treasure hunt. As listeners walked closer to the secret venue, the sound became progressively clearer, ultimately leading them to a truly social, real-life event.

Amapiano, a Nguni word loosely translated to “the pianos” is a subgenre of house music that emerged in South Africa in the mid 2010s. It is a hybrid of deep house, jazz, Zulu, and lounge music characterized by synths and wide, percussive basslines. It grew in popularity in social media and digital streaming platforms, allowing artists to connect with new audiences and build their followings at a local level and expanding their influence globally. Over the past two years alone, Spotify has recorded 563% streaming growth in Amapiano as the genre is becoming increasingly popular.

Daliwonga began singing in his school choir and is now one of the top Amapiano artists today at the forefront of bringing Amapiano into the spotlight. In his own words, the genre is “an original sound from South Africa, and I’m proud of saying that.” The emphasis on melody over vocals means that it’s a highly danceable beat and popular in festivals, dance halls/clubs, and among both DJs and live shows alike–making it the perfect sound for our immersive audio experience encouraging socialization in Cape Town.

In 2023 Schweppes launched their new global brand platform “Born Social,” a reminder to the world to live life as they were born—social. The brand needed an impactful activation to launch this platform and serve as a pilot that could be implemented in other markets around the world.

From a business perspective, increased socialising means more consumption, and the marketing objective was to boost the salience of the Born Social platform, enticing our audience to overcome routine defaults that prevent them from being in the mindset to get social.

To bring fame to their new platform and complement the traditional advertising work they’d done previously, Schweppes wanted to get into the cultural conversation with an ‘experience idea’ that would allow their audience of ‘Young Seekers’ to take part in the brand story. The KPIs were an increase in cultural conversation on social media and in the press.

We found that 73% of people wear headphones to avoid social interaction. Schweppes, a brand known for tonic water, believes socialising is essential. So we used the same headphones that cause isolation to create a social movement, with a never-before-seen (or heard) audio experiment: The Social Sound.

While people walked through the city center in Cape Town, Amapiano sensation Daliwonga invited them to an exclusive concert at a secret venue. The catch? You could only find the live show if you followed the music. We turned headphones into a sonic GPS, creating the first-of-its-kind navigation system linking geolocation to 360 degree audio. If fans heard the sound from the left, they turned left. From the right, they turned right. The music reacted in real time to the listener’s positioning. And the closer they got to the venue, the fuller the sound, clueing them in which direction to go.

We wanted to turn our brand POV into a behaviour and bring our viewpoint into culture. To do this we focussed on our target demographic “Young Seekers” extroverts ages 25-40, who are open to new tastes, experiences, and trends.

Like all of us, barriers get in the way of their social life, like overuse of technology, or defaulting to comfort at the end of a work day. Our strategy was to intercept them in the moments they’re defaulting to comfort, with experiences based on their passions, enabling them to choose out over in.

In this case, these Young Seekers in South Africa are more likely to be fans of Amapiano (local Afro beats genre) music, which has seen 563% streaming growth on Spotify over the past two years. This context was the perfect opportunity for Schweppes to live out our brand belief and encourage others to do the same.

While people walked through the city center with their headphones in Cape Town on December 29, Amapiano star Daliwonga invited them on Instagram to an exclusive concert at a secret venue you can only find if you follow the music. We turned headphones into a sonic GPS, by creating the first-of-its-kind sound navigation system linking geolocation to specially designed 360 degree audio. If fans heard the sound from the left, they turned left. From the right, they turned right. The music was entirely immersive and reacted in real time to the listener’s positioning, even coming from behind them if they turned in the wrong direction. And the closer they got to the secret location, the louder and fuller the sound, clueing them in which direction to go along pedestrian walkways. The live concert was held at a stunning yet unsuspecting location–the rooftop of an office building in the city center.

Our goal was to bring outsized attention to the brand’s new platform “Born Social.” We increased nationwide social conversation around the brand 5805%, received 10,500% more mentions than the main competitor; all of it with 0% negative sentiment. We also hit the highest search volumes in 4 years in the country with social reach for the one-day event hitting over 1,817,532 with 1,599 unique mentions. This made #Schweppes the trending topic on Twitter/X for 6 days in a row in South Africa.

The Social Sound was featured in National TV News Broadcast SABC TrendzLive with a total audience reach of 11.8M people. Local digital coverage including Biz Community and Carve Africa had an audience reach of 13.5M people. National and local radio coverage included Heart FM “Cape Town’s Beat,” The Switch station’s “Heart Squad,” Good Hope FM, and 5FM South Africa.