To support the launch of its new GummiBursts candy line, Mars-owned Starburst has rolled out a new campaign called “Share something juicy.”
“The concept of sharing seemed like a natural fit for the brand,” said Todd Stanley, SVP of marketing at Digitas. “Starburst is a candy that’s extremely shareable because it’s individually wrapped, and so we leveraged this insight into a campaign in which we’re sharing excessively with our audience,” he said.
Digitas worked on the online elements of the campaign, which included a re-design of www.Starburst.com as well as a dedicated Starburst channel on YouTube. TBWA/Chiat/Day also developed a GummiBursts TV spot.
The new Starburst site is designed to look like a stage. “It’s a metaphor for all this content being on display,” Stanley said. Users click on individual candies to access the various elements of the site, including a number of videos highlighting awkward “moments in sharing.”
For the campaign, Starburst will sponsor the animated online talk show Nite Fite, which is syndicated by Next New Networks. The candy company has also partnered with video bloggers David Choi, DavidJr, Katers17 and Rhett & Link.
“We have engaged a series of leading bloggers who have established relationships with the millennials target that we pursuing,” said John McCarus, VP and group director of brand content at Digitas/The Third Act.
“What we found out about them is that the way they fit in is by standing out,” Stanley said of the millennials demographic. “They want to share excessively themselves and this is fueled by technology,” he added.
The video bloggers communicate what the Starburst brand stands for in their own styles, McCarus explained. For example, Katers17 created a video talking about her “juiciest” moment, which consisted of a messy tumble into a strawberry patch. “Through all those creative interpretations we’re going to be communicating the whole value and power of sharing across the Web,” he added.
Rather than following a traditional model where content is aggregated on one site to attract a large audience, content will be “shared” across the Web, Stanley said. For example, episodes of Nite Fite can be accessed from the Starburst Web site and on the dedicated Starburst channel on YouTube.
The episodes will also be available on the Next New Networks family of sites, as well as across the Web with various relationships with other portals, video bloggers and untraditional content distributors, McCarus said.
