How Rekorderlig Cider, Cake and Havas London created the first ‘mixed reality’ tasting bar

Rekorderlig faced serious competition in 2019. With competitors who were seemingly going from strength-to-strength in their marketing to the off-trade, our challenge wasn’t easy. We needed to raise awareness and drive differentiation of Rekorderlig’s Botanicals range of fruit ciders, showcasing the beauty of the carefully picked ingredient collaborations in each of the products, while getting the product in the hands of consumers in an innovative, memorable and premium way.

Our objectives were clear:

• Increase consideration and trial amongst 18-35 year olds.

• Build brand awareness and salience.

• Prove that Rekorderlig is a modern, premium Swedish brand.

The strategy

Our strategy was developed based on a series of truths about consumer, category convention and brand.

Consumer - Our millennial consumers value experience over possession, seeing these as more meaningful than ownership. Delivering a memorable brand focused experience for our consumers in a sociable setting was therefore key.

Brand - As well as being more valuable in the minds of our audience, we needed to use the opportunity to make an experience that would make the brand stand-out in the category, and so driving differentiation for Rekorderlig. The category is saturated with examples of people enjoying drinking together, but that’s where the experiences end. Our opportunity was to prove that Rekorderlig is a modern and premium drink to socialise with by surprising and delighting our audience through technological innovation. The Rekorderlig Botanicals range needed to be the focus of this activation.

Category - Our audience were valuing experiences more than ever, so our brand needing to differentiate itself in the category focusing on modern and premium cues, and our new collection of flavour collaborations brought us to an idea.

The campaign

Our solution was the UK’s first mixed-reality bar experience.

In collaboration with a well-known mixed reality artist, we allowed people to immerse themselves in the new flavours through taste, touch and smell. The flavours were brought to life in the real world, in a place where our audience could have a drink and socialise but also step through to a multi-sensory experience to immerse themselves in the flavours.

Visitors put on their mixed reality headsets and could touch, smell and interact with the fruits and flavours of Rekorderlig. The interactive nature was designed to give each visitor a unique encounter depending on where they looked and what they touched and was powered by Magic Leap - a pioneering interactive technology that projects holographic imagery and light waves together in the wearers’ vision. The Magic Leap tech worked alongside set design, in-room and in-ear spatial sound, theatrical lighting, and the scents of Rekorderlig flavours, meaning we were able to blur the line between the real and virtual worlds to celebrate the beautiful collaboration of ideas and flavours, adding a completely new dimension to brand engagement.

To further enhance the experience, we created Snapchat lenses that used assets from the experience to enable people to augment their Rekorderlig Botanical Cider drinks. This provided our audience with a multitude of sharable elements to drive word of mouth of the mixed reality experience. The Snap lenses were later rolled-out nationally which enabled the wider public to experience Rekorder-land for themselves, interacting with the drink and engaging with the brand’s Swedish heritage through use of the AR Midsummer fruit crown.

Visitors were given ample opportunity to sample the new Rekorderlig Botanicals flavour BlackberryViolet-Juniper; a unique collaboration of fruits and florals, as well as the rest of its much-loved botanicals range, exclusive Rekorderlig cocktails and the core Rekorderlig cider range. Rekorderlig was the first brand to ever offer this mixed reality experience to the public which we feel signified the start of new tech-driven trend for UK brands and provided real salience for Rekorderlig against its competitors.

Rekorder-land was open from the 30th May until the 13 July 2019 and free tickets to the experience were available to book on SeeTickets. The experience itself was approximately eight minutes long and up to 3 people at a time could enjoy it – offering a social and shareable moment. Guests were offered a 50ml Rekorderlig botanicals sample upon exiting the experience.

The experience was created and led by Cake, the sport, culture and entertainment hub of Havas, in partnership with immersive experiences director Connie Harrison. The experience created was a central campaign element. The wider campaign, that supported the activation, was created as a collaboration between three other agencies in the Havas Village: Havas London (brand and ATL), One Green Bean (consumer PR) and Field Day (shopper activation)

The results

Looking back to our objectives, the campaign was able to deliver across all three key areas:

• Increase consideration and trial amongst 18-35 year olds: the campaign delivered strongly here with 92% (278/303) of attendees surveyed stating that they would definitely purchase Rekorderlig in the future having attended the event and enjoyed a sample.

• Build brand awareness: were able to deliver a strong change in perception of the brand with 57% (173/303) of those surveyed expressing that the event had changed their opinion of Rekorderlig.

• Show people Rekorderlig is a premium, modern Swedish brand: the event look, feel and experience demonstrated this in its tone – beautifully Swedish throughout, which helped to drive sharing online through its ‘instagrammable’ aesthetic.

Our full list of results include:

• 2,388 people through the experience.

• 2,100 sample giveaways.

• The social event awareness campaign drove a click through rate three times higher than the projected benchmark, successfully teasing the experience and driving ticket sales.

• The augmented cocktail Snapchat lens received on average a 91.81 second play time, 9 times above the Snapchat benchmark of 8-12 secs showing that the lens creative kept consumers captivated well beyond that of other branded lenses. In addition, the share rate of 9.58% was over double that of the brand benchmark.

• The national Rekorder-land Snap lens successfully delivered 9.3 million impressions with 34,000 consumers sharing the Rekorder-land fruit crown creative.

• Volume of Rekorderlig social mentions spiked in line with the launch of Rekorder-land, driving showing that the experience generated conversation and interest on social with the mixed reality experience, set design and social integration providing a wealth of content for consumers to share.

• 91% (277/303) of people said they would very likely recommend Rekorderlig to friends/family in the future.

• 92% (278/303) of people said they would definitely purchase Rekorderlig in the future after having attended this event.

• 57% (173/303) of people said the experience had changed their opinion of Rekorderlig in a positive way.

• 74% (224/303) of people said they would recommend this experience to their friends and family.

“In 2018, we established the hyper-real world of Rekorder-land, a place more Swedish than Sweden across our digital channels. This year, we have made that world a reality, offering consumers a chance to step into the physical iteration of our brand world, where the beauty and flavours of the Rekorderlig family come to life. We’ve combined cutting edge technology and creativity to create a truly immersive brand experience for our fans.” - Rachel Twemlow, brand manager for Rekorderlig.

Positive consumer experience comments recorded:

“This is great marketing; it actually makes me want a Rekorderlig now!”

“This is something really different and clever”

“I came yesterday and had to come back today with my daughter – love this experience”

“The drink smells exactly like it did in the experience”

“I love the set, can I stay here forever?!”

This project was highly commended at The Drum Experience Awards 2019. Click here to register your interest in 2020’s event.