Retry campaign

Aquarius

RECOVER WHAT MOVES YOU

Sioux meet Cyranos

“Aquarius”

  • TV

Throughout history, humans have always sought answers to questions. Questions that arise from our anxieties, fears or shortcomings, but above all from what amuses us, what makes us happy and what motivates us. As humans, we want to face our imperfections. We want to learn to fly, to be faster, stronger, sexier, go further or be smarter. We wanted to be so perfect, that we created ‘improved’ versions of ourselves and called them Robots and Artificial Intelligences. Such seemingly perfect versions…! Did you know that in the near future more than 60% of the jobs we know will be done by robots and Artificial Intelligences? But can we really replace the role of humans? Humans asks themselves questions, those that stem from their frustrations, their failures, their joys, their sorrows, their imperfections. They are capable of the worst, but also of the sublime, of surpassing themselves to become better. That is why there is something that truly makes us irreplaceable, something inherent to the human being. The DESIRE. Desire is what drives us to try something over and over again until we get it right, and even if we sometimes get it wrong, it is desire that forces us to restart. There are times in life when we receive some news we would never have liked to hear, or when we think we won’t get a second chance. But sometimes we just need a little push to show the world who we really are. And we’ll be there with you, every time you fall and get up. From a student who manages to get back on her feet after a bad result, to a gymnast who never loses the desire to try again and again until she succeeds. Reaffirming oneself, refalling in love, being reborn… These things are more meaningful now than the first time we did them, because they show that we never give up. Desire makes us unique. Even when there seems to be no hope. It is this desire to reinvent ourselves, to bring out the best in ourselves, that inspired the creation of “RETRY”, an ode to the desire.

Shot by Owen Harris, director of Black Mirror, it captures the desire of human beings to continue learning despite making mistakes, or thinking that second chances don’t exist. We take these first attempts as a period of training to later hydrate ourselves, recharge our batteries and re-thrill ourselves. Rediscover the desire that drove you to try something for the first time and try again until you succeed. Each retry will be better than the last, because it will mean that you have never given up.

  • STRATEGY

Aquarius has been a benchmark brand for a long time in our country. The visible face of this drink has always been athletes, as a symbol of effort and consistency. As time passed, the brand was witness to all kinds of people triumphing around it, which ended up being the everyday nature of Aquarius and from then on, its speech transformed giving space to the common or everyday: the most natural thing is to be extraordinary. Aquarius enjoyed its own era, being the protagonist of historic events. From Olympic Games or marathons to festivals or the building of a cathedral. Being seen as a soft drink and not as an isotonic drink, it has a wide variety of competitors. Nevertheless, being a still drink, it attracts an extensive target that rejects sparkling drinks. However, the brand has suffered a deterioration over the last few years due to relevant factors and communication shortfalls which we will analyse later on.

Aquarius suffered an important loss of sales volume due to an essentially relevant factor and due to a previous mistake in its communication, but to overcome this situation and increase sales, first it needed to get closer to people and increase the awareness that it was so well known for.

So, its aims were:

1. Increase awareness

2. Recover the key attributes as a market leader in the Spanish market

3. Recover the acknowledged intrinsic benefits of the product

What opportunities does re-positioning give us?
Aquarius has always accompanied humans in their challenges. Supporting the idea that the world isn’t mad, but that humans are extraordinary, this soft drink was for a long time an ally for mankind. Aquarius wanted to rescue its truths to carry on building, but to do that it had to find a universal, transversal and fertile human tension that could represent the brand and everything it had been so far.
What new space can the brand occupy and how can it get there?
In trying to dig deeper into the uniqueness of the human being, we became aware that, while it is true that man is capable of surpassing himself time after time and making progress, the day has 24 hours and inevitably one must rest and replenish oneself. That’s when we realised that Aquarius has a very clear, but above all useful role: it encourages me to keep going because it has ingredients with mineral salts that allow me to hydrate and recover faster. We wanted to convey this reflection through ‘recover what moves us’ because, on the one hand, ‘recover’ alludes to Aquarius’ capacity to recharge us, replenish us and get us going again. On the other hand, ‘what moves us’ speaks of humans, and this simple phrase offers us a very broad spectrum. It speaks of comings and goings, of beginnings, of restarts, of falling in love and falling in love again, of trying and trying again, of getting excited and getting excited again, in short, what ‘moves us’ is precisely the RE – and therein lies the challenge, in that second times are more difficult than the first. The most revealing aspect of this reflection was that Aquarius is no less than all of the above, Aquarius hydrates and rehydrates, charges and recharges, vitalises and revitalises… The product is on a par with the human being and this makes it grow. Product and human play the same game and feed off each other.

From these strategic discoveries, the idea had to move in the same direction. Taking the reference from the context we live in, the creative team saw an opportunity to face off humans with machines. Over the last few years, robots, artificial intelligence or humanoids have started to become a tangible threat. Digital worlds that overlap with reality, machines capable of communicating with us, devices that that can calculate data at an unimaginable speed … If human beings are characterised by surpassing themselves and it’s getting more and more difficult , Aquarius still works to put a spin on the perspective that’s so negative. Aquarius would be the protagonist of the story, the motor needed to give sense to the speech. The visual execution was one of the most important points, that’s why the decision was taken to to do it with one of the directors of the dystopian series, Black Mirror. Owen Harris knew how to tell a powerful story without forgetting its main character: Aquarius. So, on May 28 2021, a teaser was launched that put Aquarius back in the spotlight and kept the public expectant until 4 days later, when it was definitively launched with the first appearance shown during prime time on TV on the night of 1 June. Later the piece was shown on digital, in cinemas, the press, out of home and in magazines, the campaign ran until the end of September.

• Internal sales volume rose by 75% with respect to the 3 months previous to the campaign.
• The Aquarius brand value rose by 0.7 points with respect to 2020, 0.2 with respect to 2019 and 1.8 points with respect to the three months previous to the campaign.
• Just two weeks after the launch of the campaign, 53% of our strategic target/audience had seen the ad, as well as 51% of the total audience.
• Of our strategic target, 65% got the main message of the campaign “Aquarius. Recover what moves us” and 68% affirmed that they liked the campaign.
• Penetration of Aquarius into homes increased by 4.5%.
• 66% of our strategic target and 57% of the media in the country, attributed credibility to the brand.

“Aquarius”

“Aquarius”

With Aquarius, we wanted you to rekindle that desire to be your own boss. To try that triathlon, pentathlon, or decathlon again. To get back into those driving classes. To resume those ancient civilizations classes, because you too could make history.

You did everything you could with the prefix RE- in order to regain what moved you. Because for us, retrying always had more value than trying for the first time.

And to help you achieve it, we proposed a game where you could win prizes every day.

How? We launched packages with all the letters of the alphabet in Aquarius typography. We asked you to form verbs starting with RE-.

Each package had a pincode that had to be entered on a digital platform to participate in the game by forming verbs and winning daily prizes of €250 and a final prize of €100,000. All of this was supported by a strong campaign on television, digital platforms, outdoor advertising, points of sale, and the packages themselves.

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