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Snapple encourages fans to do the talking and showcase the brand

Author

Brielle Jaekel
Dr Pepper Snapple Group tea and juice brand Snapple is leveraging hashtags, viral video, social media and celebrity spokespeople to persuade fans and millennials to share why they love the brand, in an effort to gear up for its most popular season and further its image as a trusted customer-first brand in a highly competitive category. 

Snapple has been a widely popular brand in the past and a staple in pop culture due to its branding and unique marketing content, which this campaign is using to its advantage with having fans share why they feel affection for the brand with the hashtag #LoveSnapple on social media channels. In recent years the beverage industry has been in upheaval due to consumers? fears of high calorie counts and harmful ingredients common in soft drinks, and Snapple has tried to stay above that with its ability to modify its strategy early on to fit customer values. 

"The power and reach of today's brand is held in the hands of its customers, because organic brand advocacy is more convincing than a paid endorsement," said Folke Lemaitre, CEO and founder of Engagor. "Companies who have excelled in the current era of digital marketing and advertising are those who have unlocked the emotional connection with the people who love what they sell and use it to promote awareness of their product or service."

The #LoveSnapple campaign is pulling out all the stops on social media using video advertisements starring Nick Cannon and Jimmy Fallon, a campaign hub located on Tumblr that serves as an aggregate page for all related posts from users and fans and official pages on all social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. The Tumblr page offers easy participation with links to post and share content on user?s personal social media pages. 

Celebrity outreach
New York is the birthplace of Snapple and inherently the #LoveSnapple campaign as well. Originally starting out with five chosen New Yorkers to share their love of Snapple in a video ad campaign the discussion has now opened up nationally, starting off with an online exclusive and mobile optimized video ad from Nick Cannon encouraging fans nationally to share the love. 

Host of the Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon did a sponsored segment on the show with an argument with a fan over who loves Snapple more in an effort for the video to go viral online. 
It is important for Snapple to include all these facets in a campaign and the timing of the initiative is accurate as well, as the summer season incites greater popularity for its products. 

"The #LoveSnapple campaign is rooted in the fact that we are a brand that has truly passionate fans who love to share their love of Snapple," said  "The unique and great part about this passion is that it can mean different things to different people; for some it is the flavor combinations for others it may be that signature bottle pop.  

"As a brand with over 40 years of heritage in the beverage category we realized the best advocates for our brands are our fans and so we went back to the beginning and asked the fans who have been with us from the birth of Snapple in NYC to share why they love Snapple," she said. "Every aspect of this #LoveSnapple campaign has been based on real Snapple fans who are real New Yorkers, like Snapple, sharing their love.  

"From the real people featured in our TV spots, to the real fans who created their way of sharing their love on our social channels to our partnership with real New York TV personalities it has all been rooted in the #LoveSnapple love."

Its long history of deep connection with consumers makes this campaign foreseeable. However, there is not much incentive for consumers to get involved in the discussion. 

There is no prize or contest, although Nick Cannon alluded to the possibility of rewards mentioning that ?you never know when the brand might surprise lucky fans" who participate. But nothing has been directly addressed, which could lead consumers to disregard the campaign.   

Mobile strategy
Also, recently Dr Pepper Snapple Group?s boosted its multichannel strategy by betting on programmatic mobile ads that helped drive 213,000 in-store visits to more than 1,000 grocery store locations and placed its products in 25,000 new households (see more). 

Beverage brands are keen to use social media and mobile for marketing purposes. 

For Mother's Day, Coca-Cola is uncapped mobile to help consumers reach their mothers worldwide by showcasing an interactive video about the relationship between parent and child, and offering viewers a free three-minute phone call to their mothers anywhere in the world upon completion of the video (see more).

These hashtag led campaigns can be beneficial but also have potential for downfall. 

"If a company already has a strong fan base, they won't need to incentivize consumers to get involved with their brand," Mr. Lemaitre said. "When there isn't much participation or positive engagement with a hashtag campaign like this, it opens up the possibility for the dark side of the internet to hijack the hashtag for negative purposes. 

"And without a legion of loyal and active fans and followers to drown out the negativity, there is potential for this campaign to backfire," he said. "Some benefits of creating a campaign like this include building product awareness to an audience that may not have known about the brand and establishing the brand as a leader in social media trends. 
 
"Some potential pitfalls include opening up the opportunity for others to misuse the hashtag to embarrass the brand and failing to create enough awareness about the campaign, leading to a complete flop."

Final take
Brielle Jaekel is editorial assistant at Mobile Marketer and Mobile Commerce Daily