Britvic has launched a new venture with PepsiCo’s drinks division in a bid to boost the on-the-go soft drinks category.
The Reward Your Thirst text-to-win promotion is billed as Britvic and PepsiCo’s first-ever cross-brand push and the biggest consumer promotion to date for Britvic, which bottles PepsiCo’s Pepsi and 7Up in an exclusive agreement.
Starting from next month, the year-long campaign is designed to reward consumer loyalty, and will run across all Tango, 7Up and Pepsi variants, as well as Drench, Juicy Drench and Mountain Dew, with prizes to be won every minute.
Each promotional bottle will have a unique code on-pack, which consumers need to text in to see if they have won a prize, such as an “ultimate mates” road trip in the US for a Pepsi Max drinker. Other prize partners include LoveFilm, Sky and Puma.
“The brands that are part of the Reward Your Thirst campaign are about having fun and enjoying life and we are confident that the initiative will strike a chord with on-the-go consumers,” said Adrian Haylock, marketing development manager at Britvic.
“Offering just one promotion across a wide range of brands will make it easier for retailers to display something appealing to a large number of consumers,” he added.
The promotion comes as Britvic revealed the uplift in sales generated by the switch in April from 500ml bottles of Pepsi Max, Diet Pepsi, 7Up Free and Tango to 600ml formats to improve their value for money and revive falling sales of on-the-go drinks.
The bigger impulse format, which kept the 99p rsp, added £9.8m to on-the-go carbonated soft drink sales and helped reverse an 8.7% market decline to 3.8% growth in value terms, said Britvic, citing Nielsen data.
Retailers and consumers had benefited from the move, said PepsiCo.
Haylock predicted a similar positive impact on sales from the Reward Your Thirst campaign, which will be supported next month by outdoor, digital and PoS activity, combined with price-marked packs and promotions.
