Coca-Cola?s Sprite Cranberry brand is uncapping its seasonal marketing efforts by rolling out a mobile-optimized Tumblr site, starring New York restaurateur Eddie Huang as a Santa Claus-like character.

Sprite?s Tumblr site has been decked out in red for the impending arrival of the holidays, with the unofficial color of the season tying in nicely with Sprite Cranberry?s crimson cans. American restaurateur and personality Eddie Huang is featured on the mobile-optimized site as ?St. Rick,? who stars in his own YouTube video and seasonal poem.

?Tumblr is just one part of our total social ecosystem,? said Jiah Choi, director of integrated marketing content at Sprite, Coca-Cola North America. ?We love Tumblr for a few reasons.

?It's a great storytelling platform. This holiday season, Sprite is introducing St. Rick?a fun twist to a classic holiday tradition. Tumblr allows us to use a variety of short form content ? GIFs, memes, videos, photos ? making it easy for our fans to engage and share this story.?

Tumblr?s branded cachet
While many beverage marketers tend to gravitate toward social networks such as Twitter and Instagram for their branding efforts, Sprite is breaking the mold by taking its advertising to Tumblr, a Yahoo-owned microblogging platform popular with many younger consumers and mobile-savvy millennials.

The prominence of shareable GIFs has caused Tumblr?s popularity to skyrocket over recent years, suggesting it is more than an up-and-coming marketing platform for brands to leverage.

?We can expect to see more beverage companies looking to appeal to millennial consumers and those using smartphones and tablets turn to Tumblr for their mobile marketing strategies,? said Ron Selvey, vice president of marketing at ReadyPulse Inc. ?We?re also seeing another trend where a number of brands are using ?non-paid? social influencers campaigns to complement their celebrity endorsements like the Sprite Cranberry new Tumblr campaign featuring NYC restaurateur Eddie Huang.

?These campaigns successfully leverage authentic conversations to inspire consumers. The focus in the campaigns on the people, not ads, and though Tumblr is a viable platform, so are other platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, etc.?

When consumers visit sprite.tumblr.com on their smartphones, they will be privy to the soda marketer?s newest YouTube commercial. In the video, a teen attempts to convince his friends of the existence of St. Rick, a Santa Claus-like figure, after they ask him where he received his can of Sprite Cranberry.

The friends react in disbelief until Mr. Huang, dressed in a red puffer coat and driving a red pickup truck stocked with plenty of Sprite, drives by on a city street. The camera then pans to a pair of Nike Air sneakers resting on a fire escape, with a can of Sprite Cranberry and Sprite Cranberry Zero stuck in each shoe.

Users may then scroll through the entire site, which contains GIFs of the soda cans and additional images of Sprite placed in Nike sneakers, before it pans to a full-length poem about St. Rick.

The poem, a humorous take on holiday rhetoric, features verses such as ?Some claim he?s a man, others say elf, but one thing?s for certain: St. Rick buys the Sprite Cran off the shelf.?

Each standalone verse is able to be reblogged by viewers, making it easy for active social media followers to glimpse parts of the poem.

?Tumblr makes it easy for people to view and share content on their mobile phones,? Sprite's Ms. Choi said.

Social-influenced campaign backing
The decision to center the campaign on Eddie Huang will likely add another influential notch to the Sprite brand. Mobile users enjoy seeing recognizable faces in marketers? posts and videos, which has sparked a flurry of business for social influencers.

Other food and beverage marketers may also soon turn to Tumblr for their advertising initiatives, especially if Sprite sees a significant amount of shares from the video and poem.

Several companies have already dipped their toes into Tumblr?s platform, recognizing its cachet with younger consumers.

McNeil Nutritionals artificial sweetener brand Splenda recently rolled out new content featuring popular food-related celebrities for its mobile advertising campaign following a successful initial push that saw a 900-percent engagement increase through Tumblr and doubled the brand's reach through Yahoo (see story).

Additionally, Starbucks, which put the focus on SMS for its seasonal promotions in the past, made a big push on social media as it engaged in a marketing blitz for the return of its Pumpkin Spice Latte that included official accounts for the drink on Tumblr, Twitter and Instagram (see story).

?Tumblr is part of a larger campaign that hopefully reminds our fans to be Merry Merry with Sprite Cranberry during the holidays!? Ms. Choi said.

Final Take
Alex Samuely, staff writer on Mobile Marketer, New York