OOH Ad Review: Ribena’s Doodle Your World

Ribena’s 2017 summer campaign, Doodle Your World, is running off the back of a vibrant relaunch of Ribena bottles.

The £4m campaign runs alongside an updated version of last year’s You Can’t Get Any More Ribenary TV ad.

The new ad refreshes the original concept with new visuals and features the same irritatingly catchy bubblegum pop jingle, and encourages viewers to download an Augmented Reality (AR) app to ‘make your world more #Ribenary’.

Its centrepiece is a free “next generation” AR app designed by Brass, with which users can map a series of animated “doodle” overlays onto the real world environment to produce sharable photo or video content. The app puts an emphasis on social sharing, rewarding users by unlocking further doodle characters.

Doodles can also be unlocked by scanning new interactive Ribena packs and bottles. The campaign appears to be influenced by the insight that mobile is a great way to foster audience engagement. Indeed, Brass sought to link “the bottle in your hand to the mobile in your pocket” with this app.

The doodle campaign resonates with last year’s Colouring Cafe popup which invited consumers to colour in individual tiles, forming part of a greater mural.

This summer campaign represents a continuation of the partnership with Brass. The emphasis of colourful illustrations is still at the forefront and resonates with Ribena’s visual branding, underscored by their use of jovial and inventive language like the invented “Ribenary” adjective, and laid-back wordplay like “downloodle”.

OOH and Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality is of course nicely suited to the out-of-home (OOH) environment and a series of colourful phone box ads reinforce the “doodle your world” message.

The doodle posters are also displaying on digital AdTowers outside high-street stores, targeting audiences close to the point of purchase with a high impact medium.

Local street stalls are handing out free Ribena bottles. The Ribena events team are also visiting UK workplaces to deliver gift bottles, posters, and watercooler overlays to help get the word out. This seems to be particularly effective given the positive response on Twitter.

Ribena are very keen on “creating more meaningful interactions with our target audience” and this multi-channel campaign is an attempt to leverage crowd sourced content creation to deliver a more organic and engaged ambient marketing profile.

We are seeing more and more brand campaigns delivered with this kind of multi-channel approach. In terms of AR uptake, Ribena are not the only brand pushing the envelope of mobile.

We’ve written about the KFC Snapchat Selfie campaign which saw the popular poultry provider team up with Snapchat to give a transformative edge to phone box advertising. And the NHS have used AR to poignant effect with their blood donor campaign.

BIC released a 2016 AR experience with their DrawyBook app, which integrated drawing and colouring exercises with immersive narrative storytelling.

We can no doubt expect to see a greater integration of mobile and out-of-home in future campaigns, especially given the increasing familiarity audiences have with AR.

Ribena have delivered a fresh, irreverent, and engaging campaign that, like Innocent before them, marks them out as a drinks brand with a distinctive voice. A voice that resonates well with millennials and doesn’t take itself too seriously.

some tweets:

Look what we received from @RibenaUK We thought we were getting just 3 bottles, not 3 cases #overthemoon You guys are gr8! 👏👏#ribenary pic.twitter.com/bFl4ffMXsH

— Lawrence Grant, (@LGaccountants) July 20, 2017

Thank you @RibenaUK. All the flavours are being spread across the floors as we speak! #Ribenary #summertreat pic.twitter.com/qAdJzzKmLZ

— JMW Solicitors (@jmwsolicitors) July 18, 2017

People are absolutely lapping up our No Added Sugar #Ribena This is one #Ribenary Summer Alright!!! Flavours On Point! @TROexperiential pic.twitter.com/FcoFfpz9EL

— Jenny Scott (@ScottyNutrition) July 20, 2017

Free @RibenaUK in #stafford what's the catch guys? #ribenary pic.twitter.com/28SLipiPx6

— Mark (@Mbed88) July 20, 2017