Dive Brief:
- Innocent Drinks, a beverage brand owned by Coca-Cola that sells juice and smoothies, captured over 25,000 consumer profiles from a recent digital out-of-home (OOH) campaign that leveraged QR codes, Marketing Dive can exclusively share. The number of profiles collected exceeded expectations by 5,000%.
- The activation in London metro locations took place in March and invited consumers to explore the brand’s sustainability efforts through QR code-bearing digital billboards. Imagery featured soil and roots meant to align with the subterranean setting.
- The effort delivered a 65% engagement rate and 10% repeat engagement rate. The campaign targeting environmentally conscious consumers was intended to boost brand visibility and signals the emphasis brands are placing on first-party data gathering.
Dive Insight:
Coca-Cola’s Innocent Drinks touts that the key to its products are fruits, vegetables and “anything else nature has going spare,” with its activation at London metro stations meant to connect its roots with the subterranean setting. The campaign looked to boost visibility of the brand and its environmental focus while connecting it with the growing number of like-minded consumers who also prioritize sustainability.
The campaign was also intended to boost Innocent Drinks’ first-party data troves, according to a case study around the effort. The activation relied on digital billboards that encouraged consumers in the London Underground transit system to scan a QR code, which was powered by Digiphy, with a call-to-action that read “scan to dig deeper.” Consumers who scanned the QR code could learn about the brand’s sustainability initiatives via a microsite while Digiphy’s platform allowed for the collection of first-party consumer data including name, email, address and birthdate.
Over the March campaign’s monthlong run, Innocent Drinks expected a “few hundred” consumer form submissions, a target that was greatly surpassed with a total of over 25,000 submissions. The success signals how mobile strategies like QR codes can be particularly effective for brands looking to gather consumer data, a focus that could see an increased emphasis amid broader shifts like Google’s again-delayed deprecation of third-party cookies.
The campaign additionally saw a 67% conversion rate and 35% click-through rate. To help drive engagement, Innocent Drinks offered free seeds for planting to consumers who engaged with the ad, though that offer quickly ran out following strong demand. The brand’s partnership with Digiphy, a QR marketing platform, was key to keeping the campaign’s messaging relevant, according to Jamie Sterry, global head of creative at Innocent Drinks.
"Digiphy has helped us meet our top KPI of growing our customer database,” said Sterry in a statement. “When we ran out of seeds, we quickly updated our messaging directly through their user-friendly and flexible platform, without needing development resources."
Sustainability and health have often been a centerpiece for Innocent Drinks’ ads, which have also included social media plays and an “Even more Innocent” campaign that riffed on the idea of struggling to list all of the fruits, vegetables and vitamins its beverage offers. However, the brand has also been accused of greenwashing, or making misleading statements about the environmental benefits of a product, with an ad in 2022 being banned by the Advertising Standards Authority for claiming its drinks help the environment. Other marketers, including parent company Coca-Cola, have increasingly found themselves in hot water over such claims.
Coca-Cola first started working with Innocent Drinks in 2009 after buying a 20% share in the business, later taking full ownership in 2013. Others have similarly made sustainability and the planet a focus of their advertising lately, including Puma, Honda and Oatly.
