The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf had a joyous summer due to the success of its “Keep Cool and Summer On” campaign, which was crafted to promote the merchant’s line of iced beverages.
Noted as the “most significant and comprehensive” advertising campaign in the brand’s history, “Keep Cool and Summer On” initiative targeted Millennial consumers across multiple channels, including radio, more than 100 billboards and bus shelter advertisements, digital video and banner ads, according to Diane Kuyoomjian, VP of Marketing for The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf.
“The ‘Keep Cool and Summer On’ tagline drove the cold products message and conveyed The Coffee Bean’s laid back personality,” Kuyoomjian explained. In addition to increasing awareness for its iced beverages, the brand also wanted to drive traffic to locations throughout Los Angeles.
Advertisement
“We’ve seen great consumer response and engagement with the campaign, across all of the campaign elements,” said Kuyoomjian in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “It is always incredible to see the passion and interest consumers have with The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and we look forward to building on this current effort in future campaigns.”
From a media targeting perspective, The Coffee Bean invested in awareness-driving media, such as outdoor advertising and radio, according to Kuyoomjian. “We also implemented activation-driving tactics, such as mobile geo-fenced display and Pandora in-app radio and display, which allowed us to reach consumers on mobile devices when they were more likely to drive to a local Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf location.”
Social Media Grabs The Spotlight
Social media also played a starring role in the campaign. Vine videos were commissioned by the brand and consumers were able to take photos on Instagram through a “purple straw lens.” Additionally, The Coffee Bean used sentiment-based online banners, Facebook advertising, Twitter posts and hash tags.
“We wanted to engage customers in ways that supported the brand’s creative, optimistic personality in an ownable way,” Kuyoomjian explained. “The brand’s iconic purple straw gave us a device that we could use creatively in ways unique to each channel. In out-of-home advertising, it inspired a custom type of treatment for cheerful headlines; in Instagram it became a very low-fi filter; and in Vine it was the inspiration for a lot of funny videos. Because our target engages with each of these channels in different ways, we needed to tailor our creative to what would most genuinely connect with them.”
Overall, The Coffee Bean saw a very positive response to its “purple straw lens,” as it “gave brand loyalists the opportunity to engage with the brand in their own creative way,” noted Patrice Anderson, Director of e-Commerce and Online Marketing for The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. “We loved the idea of having a campaign that allowed people to actively participate from a social media standpoint.”
Partnering with agency WONGDOODY, The Coffee Bean was able to create a campaign that aligned with the preferences of Millennial consumers. Because these consumers don’t respond well to traditional media outreach “we had to find them and reach them in places where they already loved to go,” Kuyoomjian said. “That meant smart media buys combined with even smarter targeting strategies and creative that resonated with the audience.”
Extending the campaign across multiple channels and media formats was “central toboth our creative approach and our overall media strategy,” Kuyoomjian noted. “Creatively, our content approach was relevancy over consistency. Delivering content that was unique to the user experience within each platform would increase engagement. From a media perspective, we knew that reach and frequency would be important, and we leveraged that in our plan, but we also recognized that hyper-local targeting through mobile media tactics would increase our customer engagement.”
