Newcastle Brown Ale: Band Of Brands

Credits & Description:

Category: Beverage
Media: TV, Online, Radio, Point of Sale (POS)
Agency: Droga5
Client: Newcastle Brown Ale/ Heinken USA
Brand: Newcastle Brown Ale
Company: Droga5, New York
Target: USA · North America
Creative Chariman: David Droga, Droga5
Chief Creative Officer: Ted Royer, Droga5
Group Creative Director: Scott Bell, Droga5
Senior Art Director: Dan Kenneally, Droga5
Senior Copywriter: Ryan Raab, Droga5
Junior Art Director: Martins Zelcs, Droga5
Junior Copywriter: Bryan Stokely, Droga5
Chief Creation Officer : Sally-Ann Dale, Droga5
Head of Broadcast Production: Ben Davies, Droga5
Senior Broadcast Producer: David Cardinali, Droga5
Global Chief Strategy Officer: Jonny Bauer, Droga5
Head of Strategy: Chet Gulland, Droga5
Senior Strategist: Nick Maschmeyer, Droga5
Social Strategist: Rebecca Russell, Droga5
Group Account Director: Dan Gonda, Droga5
Account Director: Nadia Malik, Droga5
Account Manager: Ashton Atlas, Droga5
Interactie Producer: Rainy Kumar, Droga5
Associate Director of Technology : Keath Chan, Droga5
Technical Lead: Joachim Do, Droga5
Digital Designer: Jeff Kardos, Droga5
Language: English (US)
Objectives: Awareness, Preference, Intent, Online Traffic, Offline Traffic, Sales, Recommendation, Direct Response
Tags: Beverage, North America, English (US), Awareness, Preference, Intent, Online Traffic, Offline Traffic, Sales, Recommendation, Direct Response, TV, Online, Radio, Point Of Sale (POS)  
Campaign Description
The Big Game. It’s the biggest football game of the year. And with 120.8 million viewers, many of them in Newcastle’s 18-24 male demographic, it’s also the biggest marketing event of the year, especially for beer brands. It’s the one month every year when consumers actively seek out, share and even vote on ads instead of closing or DVR-ing past them. It’s no wonder Newcastle wanted to boost brand awareness and brand trial among their tech-savvy target audience by becoming one of the most talked-about brands in the Big Game.
There was just one problem. For the second year in a row, Newcastle didn’t have the $4.5 million needed to buy thirty seconds of airtime. Outspent by our competitors and lacking the funds to get anywhere near the Big Game, we had to get creative. So we took to Facebook, building a multi-stage campaign that played out in the weeks before the game.
Campaign Goals
Lacking the $4.5 million needed to buy 30 seconds of Big Game airtime, Newcastle decided to take a cue from the sharing economy that’s made Kickstarter, Uber, AirBnB and CityBike so popular. Our plan was simple. We’d essentially sell ad space in our ad, asking 20-30 scrappy brands like ours to pitch in for airtime with us, and then cram all 20-30 of those brands into one Big Game ad. We called it Newcastle’s Band of Brands. It was a simple way to poke fun at the ridiculous cost of Big Game advertising while inserting ourselves, and plenty of other brands, into the Big Game conversation.
Weeks before the Big Game, we enlisted Parks and Recreation’s Aubrey Plaza for a launch film that called for brands to join our brand, and released it on Facebook. In the days that followed, over 400 brands reached out asking to join us, many more than we could ever fit in one ad. In the days leading up to the game, we announced our brand partners as they joined via a series of Facebook posts, sparking more buzz as each partner joined. Once brands were fully onboard, we built momentum with a teaser featuring Aubrey Plaza along with a film that featured us pitching our idea to real small business owners. All the while, nearly all of our 37 brand partners promoted our campaign via paid Facebook posts of their own.
Finally, in the days before the Big Game, we released the craziest, most brand-packed, most fiscally responsible Big Game ad ever, featuring 38 brands in 60 seconds. The ad ran on Facebook and across the Internet in the days before the game. On game night, it aired in the one local market we could afford: Palm Springs, California.
Campaign Performance
The campaign owned the internet for weeks before the game, garnering 2.3 billion total campaign impressions. We appeared in over 400 articles, including mentions in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many of our target market’s most read outlets, like Rolling Stone and Sports Illustrated. And we racked up over 33 million views across seven pieces of content, with 2.9 million views from Facebook alone.
And for the second year in a row, Newcastle was featured in nearly every Big Game ad list, an impressive feat for a brand that can’t afford to be in or get anywhere near the Big Game. In the end, we helped lots of brands gain exposure while mostly helping ourselves, and proved you don’t need to blow your budget on the Big Game as long as you can blow other people’s budgets.