Drench sales fuelled by success of break-dancing Brains

The ad, launched to support the rollout of new pack formats to grocery, has achieved incredible digital success with over 2 million hits on YouTube, making it the No.1 most viewed comedy video on the site and No.3 in the video viral charts.

This kicked off a wave of national press coverage around the creative and its popularity on the web.

The TV campaign features the puppet ‘Brains’ from Thunderbirds, giving the performance of a lifetime while keeping himself topped up with Drench water.

Proving that “Brains perform best when hydrated”, he dances to the 90s dance classic “Rhythm is a dancer” with a unique combination of moves from crumping to knee slides.

‘Brains’ has seen his popularity soar on social networking site Facebook, with over 58 groups with over 19,000 members dedicated to appreciation of his performance in the Drench ad.

The ad launched on 13th May as a 60 second during ‘How to Look Good Naked’ on C4 with the full 90 second appearing in the following programme, Gordon Ramsay’s The F Word. The TV campaign ran to the 8th June and is currently off air but will return to screens in early August.

Hall and Partners, an independent brand and communications research agency reported the ad’s saliency (a measure of how new, different and relevant the ad is) has hit the highest levels seen by Hall and Partners for a the soft drink category with the mental hydration message cutting through well.

Brains’ break-dancing propelled Snap’s 90s anthem to No.32 in download charts through iTunes downloads, purely as a result of the ad as well as sparking discussions on Radio 1 and 2 about the ground-breaking methods used to make the ad.

Drench has also achieved significant web success with around 1,000 visits a day to www.stayderenched.com, with visitors spending an average of 2.29 minutes on the site.

The web experience builds on the TV creative by giving people the opportunity to test their own mental performance by making brains dance, using either their webcam or keyboard.

The test rates consumers according to alertness, memory and concentration, and top performers are rewarded with a free MP3 download of “Rhythm is a dancer”.

Cameron Davidson, senior brand manager for Drench at Britvic said “The success of the new Drench ‘Brains’ ad has been phenomenal.

The bottled water market is hugely competitive, but a bit dull! Drench is successfully livening up the category and generating consumer engagement particularly in the grocery channel, where it’s hard to differentiate between provenance-focused brands. So we knew Drench, as a relative newcomer, had to do something big and bold to get talked about and into shopping baskets. So far results suggest we’re achieving this.”

“The ad campaign has really created a buzz around the brand and we’re seeing this reflected in sales – Drench has made a significant impact on the grocery water market which is a real achievement but we’ve also seen benefits in the convenience and impulse channel where Drench started its journey when it launched in 2005.

“In the next year we’re looking to build on the momentum Drench has gained through further marketing investment as well as innovation. To maintain talkability across the summer months we will be launching a consumer PR campaign which will focus on the brand’s key message of mental hydration.”

Drench is now available in 1.5L, 2L PET bottles and multi-packs of six of the existing 500ml format with sports cap and easy-grip bottle shape. The original single serve 500ml and 750ml formats will continue to be available in both the grocery and impulse channels to capitalise on the convenience trend for soft drinks.

Distribution in the take-home grocery channel has reached 64% in the last 4 weeks with a rate of sale up 172% and building week on week. Drench 750ml was also the no1 water SKU by volume and value, over the last 12 weeks, in Woolworths following a successful week-long promotion campaign.

The new Drench range has achieved distribution in store at Tesco, Asda, Morrisons, Somerfield and Waitrose.

With 18 million packaged water drinkers in the UK the bottled water market continues to play an important role in the soft drinks category and Britvic is looking to become a scale player in the water category through the drench brand.

Bottled water is the third largest sub-category in the take-home channel, worth £463 million in 2007 and represents 15% of the soft drinks market by volume.