Schweppes-owned Cottee's is mulling a marketing push to capitalise on all the attention the brand has received in the past week, after it was prematurely killed off by the press.
A news.com.au article declared this month that the brand was no more, and other publications swiftly followed. Cottee's quickly refuted the claim and to get the message across to distraught fans, the brand pushed out a “quick and dirty” tactical campaign telling the internet to “just chill” Cottee's isn't going anywhere.
Schweppes general manger of marketing, Troy McKinna, told AdNews that while the story was “frustrating” because there was no truth to it, it was interesting to see the support for the Cottee's brand really take hold.
“When we monitored the comments below a lot of the articles there was a balance,” he says. “There's a changing landscape in beverages at the moment where people aren’t growing up drinking Cottee's like older generations did, health and awareness around sugar is starting to change the way people drink beverages.
“For us there's that side of the story, and then there's a lot of people who love it [Cottee’s] and don't want to be told what to do with their lives and what to drink, they were leaping to the defence of Cottee's.”
McKinna explained that the tactical ad used a “moderate” Facebook spend and had been tracking well. He also wouldn't rule out doing some more substantial marketing to capitalise on Cottee's being top of mind.
“It's a conversation we're having,” he says. “There's no firm plans yet, but we’re considering what's the best way to respond to that.”
“Over the past couple of years we've been running our 'Cheers to Childhood' TV campaign and that tracks really well for us and the plan was to keep running that in the future, but there's definitely consideration in the fact that if there's media interest and positive sentiment around the brand, is there a different way to tackle that?”
“Watch this space,” he added.
McKinna says that the brand is currently in a long-term planning phase, with its focus now being on its low sugar offering, as well as building out a whole new product category with its drops, offering Cottee's Squirts.
“We're trying to evolve the brand and move with the times and we're on the front foot with the innovation in that space,” he says. “That's a balance we’re trying to straddle, which is how do you tap into the nostalgia and the rich heritage the brand has and how do you move with the times and be a bit more progressive?”
“We were the first to move into squirts – which we've seen overseas is a half a billion dollar category in the US – which is quiet a sizeable, and we want to lead the agenda in this space.”
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