Slurpee Australia has won the Shorty Award in the Food and Beverage Category for its social media campaign ‘Thrills, No Spills’.
The award was announced at the international Shorty Awards in New York, on April 23rd.
The campaign focused on driving up sales of the Slurpee Sports Bottle, during the colder part of the year when Slurpee sales would otherwise drop.
7-Eleven Head of Brand and Communications Jess Richmond said that the sports bottle was not a new concept.
“We wanted to the way we communicated it to be unique and trailblazing, just like Slurpee,” she said.
The campaign was created by one of 7-Eleven’s digital creative partners, Isobar.
Isobar Creative Director Carmela Soares said 7-Eleven was willing to be innovative and try new ideas.
“This gives us a lot of scope from a creative perspective. We had to make sure the content was fast paced, fun and full of Slurpee,” she said.
“We created relevance for a product by dramatically pointing out its most distinct feature: it’s a bottle, so it doesn’t spill.
“To prove this, we created ‘Thrills, No Spills’ and put the traditional Slurpee cup against the new Slurpee bottle to see which could withstand the extreme activities many of our audience enjoy.”
The extreme activities included a rollercoaster, trampolining, surfing and yoga.
Ms Richmond said the campaign went better than expected.
“The campaign certainly surpassed even our expectations, with huge increases in digital engagement, and bottle sales much higher than anticipated, particularly for this time of year,” she said.
“The bottle campaign was so popular with customers, that we are bringing the Slurpee Sports Bottle back in May, with great new designs in BPA Free, dishwater safe bottles.”
The campaign proved successful within the first two weeks of its run with a 67% increase in engagement and 90% of stock sold, at an average of seven bottles per store, per day.
The 9th annual Shorty Awards were held to honour the best people and companies across social media.
It recognised the influencers, as well as the brands and organisations that made up the best of social media in 2016.
Winners were chosen through a combination of public votes and scores from the Real Time Academy.