Last year, coconut water maker Vita Coco decided that print ads starring Rihanna and her beachfront lifestyle weren’t quite enough to promote its key product. The brand is growing even faster than its super-hot category and currently represents 60 percent of the coconut-based-beverage market despite recent investments by Coca-Cola and PepsiCo in competitors Zico and O.N.E.
Earlier this year, the company also ensured its status as a classic agency world stock character: the unreliable client. Amid plans to expand internationally, Vita Coco signed Saatchi & Saatchi for creative work in September 2014. At the time, Coco’s communications director hyped this move as “the first time we’ve worked with a truly global agency,” but the relationship didn’t work out; when Saatchi’s six-month contract expired, the company announced that it would not adhere to the AOR model, choosing instead to work with multiple “agency partners” depending on its needs.
Right after that announcement, Vita Coco signed Droga5 Europe to work on “creating a UK and European campaign for the brand.”
The agency’s debut work for the client also marks the latter’s first-ever TV campaign–and while the Droga Europe win focused on UK and Europe-based campaigns, the new ad will premiere tonight on prime-time American TV.
As with so much of Droga5’s work, this ad promotes the client’s product by mocking current trends in marketing. The agency’s ire focuses on campaigns positioning various beverages as dietary/weight loss aids and effectively argues that Vita Coco doesn’t need to make such claims because its product is so simple: water from a coconut. How unhealthy could that be?
In reaching this point, Droga pokes fun at crash diets and food marketing buzzwords of the day (“super foods,” anyone?) while implying that consumers can avoid the whole mess of false claims entirely by simply sticking with RiRi’s favorite non-alcoholic beverage.
Jane Prior, EVP of global brand strategy and development, writes:
“We are excited to unveil our first ever US TV commercial. As a category leader, Vita Coco is committed to elevating the coconut water category and we’re looking forward to reaching millions of new consumers with this campaign.”
The ad will air around the world; no word on follow-ups at the moment.
Client: Vita Coco
Campaign: Stupidly Simple
Title: Get More Healthy
Launch Date: 15th June 2015
Agency: Droga5 Europe
Executive Creative Director: Nik Studzinski
Copywriter: Tom Corcoran
Art Director: Tom Bender
Producer: Rachel Amess
Head of Brand Strategy: Toto Ellis
Brand Strategist: Iona Ratcliffe
Managing Director: Nick Simons
Account Management: Yuki Yamakado
Client Vita Coco
EVP Global Brand Strategy and Development: Jane Prior
Production Company: Blink Ink
Director: Chris Bristow
Producer: Matt Marsh
Editorial: Blink Ink
Editor c/o Blink Ink
Animator c/o Blink Ink
Post Production: Blink Ink (animation/compositing)