Vita Coco, no stranger to stunt marketing, will wade into Super Bowl waters with a trio of promotions meant to simplify life for the hard-partying football crowd.
The coconut water brand, like others with no official link to the Big Game, aims to take advantage of the hoopla surrounding the event without ponying up the major media dollars required for an in-game ad or NFL sponsorship.
Its programs—which will give consumers Lyft discounts and deliver hydration and comfort food to their doors the day after the Super Bowl and beyond—are intended to reach new buyers and further endear the brand to its loyalists.
“I think almost everyone who watches football wishes the day after the Big Game were a national holiday,” Jane Prior, CMO of The Vita Coco Company, told Adweek. “We thought this was a great moment to do something unexpected that would make people smile.”
And since Vita Coco is a challenger brand, marketers there have a history of leaning into unconventional tactics, Prior said. But growth has allowed them “to do something scrappy, but at scale” for a first-time Super Bowl-adjacent effort.
On Feb. 14, the company will debut a curated storefront of morning-after remedies called The Hangover Shop. Among the items for sale, besides plentiful amounts of the brand’s electrolyte-heavy coconut water, are Advil, DiGiorno frozen pizzas, Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked ice cream, cookies, candy and other go-to guilty pleasures.
Consumers may build their own hangover kits or select from pre-made bundles like “The Bed Rest,” which includes M&Ms and Kraft Mac & Cheese, and “The Self-Care,” with a CBD lavender face mask and a Tattooed Chef açaí bowl. A veg-friendly version contains Nuggs plant-based spicy chicken nuggets and Oreos. The shop will operate in New York, Los Angeles and Miami via DoorDash, Postmates, Uber Eats and other delivery apps.
Also closely tied to game day, Vita Coco has partnered with Lyft for $10 discounts on the rideshare service on Sunday and Monday, Feb. 13 and 14, with a gameified function that turns all available cars on the map into coconuts.
Judgement-free comfort
Both promos fit into Vita Coco’s strategy of “making easy choices accessible,” Prior said, and introducing itself to newbies as “a brand that likes to have fun.”
A third program, which launched nationwide recently, extends the Hangover Shop concept into subscription box territory. Consumers who sign up for The Hangover Subscription will get deliveries of Vita Coco and other goodies in the days leading up to widely-observed partying holidays like St. Patrick’s Day, Fourth of July, Halloween and New Year’s Eve.
Conventional subscription boxes are shipped weekly, monthly or quarterly, but Vita Coco’s offering intentionally goes against the grain. By focusing on “celebration-worthy” events on the yearly calendar, the brand aims to meet consumers “exactly at their moment of need,” Prior said. (First-time deliveries will have an eye mask, a stone face roller or a sweat towel as a bonus).
Future plans may include customization, where consumers could supplement their subscriptions with dates that are personally meaningful like birthdays, anniversaries or graduations.
Though coconut water, salty snacks and copious carbs are widely understood to be antidotes to heavy drinking, Vita Coco isn’t encouraging people to over-imbibe, nor judging them for it, Prior said.
“One thing that’s really important to us is that you don’t have to indulge in alcohol to consider yourself hungover. If you stay up late watching the game and eating too much dip, we want you to be able to take part in [our programs] too,” Prior said. “And I think to some extent everyone is hungover on life in a pandemic.”
Vita Coco—whose founders established the brand in their hometown New York market by rollerblading to bodegas to sell product—has a track record of experiential activations and attention-grabbing stunts. The brand, which aligned early and successfully with pop star Rihanna, sent real coconuts through snail mail and used hater reviews of the category in previous ad campaigns.
