jkr wins silver at DBA Design Effectiveness Awards for IRN-BRU's Tartan Army
Branding design consultancy jones knowles ritchie (jkr) won silver at last night's DBA Design Effectiveness Awards for its Tartan Army campaign for A.G. Barr's IRN-BRU, which resulted in 17% brand growth and a sales increase of 500,000 litres. £34 was recouped for every £1 spent on the campaign.
Matt Parkes, Global Marketing Director at jkr, says: "We're hugely proud of this work. IRN-BRU is a truly charismatic brand and the Tartan Army campaign allowed it to reach and connect with audiences in a way it hadn't done before.
"The DBA awards showcase how design can play a pivotal role in the growth and success of brands, and we're delighted that our work for IRN-BRU has been recognised at this level."
Ambitious Targets
IRN-BRU's Tartan Army campaign, designed by jkr, consisted of 58 individual labels featuring genuine Scottish tartan designs to engage the brand's loyal fan base over a period of three months.
IRN-BRU is the leader of the Scottish carbonated drinks market, outselling all other market giants. The brand is known for its irreverent advertising and bold approach to marketing, challenging market conventions and engaging consumers with humour and personality. jkr has worked with IRN-BRU's brand owner, A.G. Barr for over two years and proposed a design campaign aimed at attracting a wider audience to the brand via a limited edition launch, focusing on leveraging a medium the brand already owned, its packaging.
Two Icons of Scotland
jkr devised the Tartan Army campaign to bring together two classic Scottish icons in order to engage audiences: tartan and IRN-BRU.
For many people, tartan is a traditional symbol of both their wider Scottish identity and their individual clan communities. jkr collaborated with the House of Tartan to select 58 traditional tartan designs to feature on the limited edition IRN-BRU labels, covering up to 11,000 surnames. Hewlett-Packard then developed a digital press algorithm that would randomise the labels, so that each retail outlet would receive a mix of designs and consumers had a better chance of finding their own family tartan in-store.
Over 5.5 million bottles were produced and the campaign was launched on Hogmanay, Dec 31st 2014, running until the end of March 2015. No brand advertising took place during this period and promotional activity remained at the same level as the previous year.
Chris Halton, Global Strategy Director at jkr, comments: "We promise every client we work with that we will unlock the charisma of their brand. This campaign did just that, celebrating IRN-BRU's unique design and its ties to Scottish heritage and culture, combining this with a personalisation element that would draw audiences to the brand."
Overwhelming Response
The campaign was welcomed by all the major Scottish retailers, with a jump in sales reported in Tesco, Morrisons, ASDA and the Co-op. The brand grew 17% against the same time period the year before, with sales increasing by half a million litres. The campaign resulted in a return of £34 for every £1 invested.
As well as increased sales, the campaign achieved a huge peak in consumer engagement with the IRN-BRU brand. After the campaign launched, the brand saw its biggest ever week of website visits and over 12,000 sets of digital tartan labels were downloaded. Overall, the campaign delivered 185% more visits to the website than in the same period the year before.
Consumers posted hundreds of positive comments on social media and the company received numerous requests for supplies of personalised bottles for events such as birthdays and weddings.
Martin Steele, Brand Group Controller at A.G. Barr, comments: "IRN-BRU has a reputation for making an impact with any marketing activity we deliver, so we are always looking for daring, bold ideas about how we can reach and interact with our audiences. We thought jkr's tartan idea was outstanding from the start, and the results of the campaign demonstrate the strategic role that design can play in building and sustaining the success of our brand."
