ABOUT

In a saturated and generic soft drinks market, StrangeLove needed to stand out. Founded by a couple of Aussies and acquired by Asahi in quick succession, we were suddenly in big-name stores and bars without having properly introduced ourselves. StrangeLove needed to make a quick, big splash on a budget.

The soft drinks and mixers category is boring. And for a category that is supposed to be refreshing, the ads are anything but. Our competitors are promising to “give you wings” and let you “open happiness.” It’s a sea of same-same and flavour has become an afterthought.

There’s also a distinct lack of Aussie-founded brands in the soft drinks market - we mostly drink the same drinks as the rest of the world, adopting their taglines and generic brand worlds.

Culturally, in Australia, we appreciate honesty and a sardonic sense of humour - we like to keep it self-deprecating. Aussies typically don’t act like they’re “better than” anyone else, because we don’t respect a snob - and the same goes for brands.

We created the platform “Drinks for Drinks’ Sake” to own self-deprecation, letting the headlines speak for themselves by using typical Australian sarcasm and self-deprecation. Unlike the category, our OOH doesn’t rely on generic lifestyle imagery and lofty promises. We use negative space and simple layouts, combined with stunning product shots and sarcastic headlines.

While the campaign had a long term aim to increase brand awareness, the primary goal was to increase short term sales.

We set out to create a short term increase in sales, and we achieved that, with a staggering 27% increase in sales in the first month of our campaign. It was also our best ever Christmas grocery sales.

Christmas 2024 saw a lot of firsts for StrangeLove, delivering a best ever result in grocery sales with over 130,000 bottles of 540ml mixers sold in December alone. We helped make StrangeLove the most accessible premium mixer brand in key Christmas weeks in both major Australian supermarkets.

The reason for the impact was because we used a distinctly Aussie tone of voice to tap into our nation’s self-deprecating humour. By creating headline-focused OOH that focused on exactly how we can’t change your average life, we distinguished ourselves from the same-same lifestyle imagery and generic headlines.