Jonathan Kemp talks about Irn-Bru 'Road to 2034' campaign
Following a press conference held at a five-a-side centre in Glasgow, Jonathan Kemp, commercial director for AG Barr, spoke to The Drum about Irn Bru's unique 'Bruzil' campaign to help 'develop' Scottish football.
This is a campaign that doesn’t use television at all – why?
If you look back at the past World Cup campaigns that we’ve done, we’ve never really done any television, we’ve always used different forms of media and in this case we’ll be using online. It gives you a lot more flexibility to work with some shorter adverts and put them in a series as well, so people will be able to watch them one after another and they will make more sense that way.
You have a tradition of World Cup advertising with Irn Bru. As a Scottish brand does it make it all more difficult when Scotland are never there?
It’s always a challenge to see what we’re going to do. We start planning quite a long time in advance and this time we wanted to do something a little bit special and the road to 2034 is quite a special campaign.
Is this a campaign that could run a long time and be used again?
It could go on for 24 years! Who knows? We may yet see Aberdeeniho up front at the 2034 World Cup Scotland Squad alongside Flavio McFadden.
How long have you been planning this?
As I say, you try to work these things through over a reasonable length of time. We wanted to make sure, particularly with the online adverts, that we’d got ones that really worked. There will be some more to come after the ones you’ve seen today.
How many will there be in total?
That’s the beauty of shooting for online. You get to decide later on whether to put them online or not, so I’m not sure how many there will be, but there are quite a few. We’ll see how things go.
Will this campaign continue through out the World Cup? Do you plan any activity afterwards?
We’ve got a long plan for the campaign to come through and it will continue throughout, but most of the activity will be seen at the start of the tournament.
How does this tie in with the Phenomenal brand message?
Well this is all about feeling ‘Phenomenal’, that’s the strapline of the brand and I hope when people see this that it will raise a smile and that people will feel phenomenal as well.
The first two virals for the campaign can be viewed on the official Irn Bru website now, with more to follow in the coming weeks.