Diet Coke is the number one diet soft drink in the world. Since its launch in 1982, a host of competitors have challenged that position, and increased competition from coffee and tea have threatened consumption occasions. In 2014, the brand asked its agency partners to help it re-establish Diet Coke as a perfect treat or break from the daily routine, focusing on the next generation of young adults.

The answer was a national sampling campaign that re-imagined the “intrinsics” of Diet Coke through one of its target audience’s biggest passion points: fashion. The campaign accomplished its objectives to drive trial; recruit new users; build brand equity through relevant, memorable experiences; re-establish Diet Coke as a perfect treat or break from consumers’ daily routine; create a can’t-miss, high-impact execution, giving consumers an authentic reason to share; and complement/amplify events and activities through social and digital to extend the “Style Bar” experience to the rest of Canada.

“Get a Taste” was a fully integrated, national campaign with TV, OOH, product sampling, digital, social and PR surrounding one marquee experiential execution, the “Toronto Diet Coke Get A Taste: Style Bar.”

Leading up to the launch of the “Style Bar” and for the duration of the online retail campaign with partner Gilt, hyper-targeted office towers were visited, interrupting consumers’ coffee break routine by serving up an iced cold Diet Coke. Each bottle was accompanied by an invitation to visit the “Style Bar” or take a micro-break and browse the curated collections online.

The “Style Bar” was strategically executed from Sept. 22 to Oct. 23 in the midst of Fashion Week and Nuit Blanche, a key time of year for Diet Coke’s social, fashion-forward target market. The brand partnered with online luxury retailer Gilt to create a unique space that was a bar, gallery and showroom combined. The “Style Bar” invited consumers to escape; even just for a moment by enjoying a Diet Coke while exploring unique art installations and browsing hand-curated fashion collections. Every last detail was inspired by the key attributes of Diet Coke – boost, luxe, red, light and refreshing. They were given the opportunity to shop a new Diet Coke exclusive collection every week on Gilt.com and in the store through tablets. In store, consumers could also enter to win coveted fashion prizes.

A roster of Canadian influencers was leveraged to promote the “Style Bar” and generate a constant stream of interesting and relevant content to populate the @DietCoke_Ca social channel, using the #DietCokeStyleBar hashtag. Influencers were invited to host their own event at the “Style Bar,” building legitimacy and awareness around the space. Over the course of five weeks, influencers Chassie Post, Steph Sterjovski and Gracie Carrol hosted a number of special events in the space to celebrate the official “Style Bar” launch, in tandem with Fashion Week and Nuit Blanche.

Through social, the team drove awareness, promoted the unique curated collections and shared special events and key influencer appearances. “Digital refreshment” micro-break moments were delivered to the target with an incentive to grab a Diet Coke, along with real-time community management alongside key partners such as Fashion Week. The Instagram Pop Up shop, a first of its kind on the platform, extended the “Style Bar” nationally by delivering a similar shopping escape to Diet Coke fans across Canada. The pop-up shop extension consisted of a contest facilitated on the @DietCoke_Ca Instagram account, where images of the collection flooded followers’ newsfeeds, offering them a chance to win the items with a simple like of each image. Fun outfit swap games rounded out the experience, where users were asked to pause an Instagram video on the frame with a hidden Gilt gift card to win it.

The program yielded a 2.1% increase in consumption amongst current drinkers (those who experienced the pop-up), 367,000 in-person consumer engagements and 267,000 perfect serve samples. It also generated 5.4 million social impressions, 46.5 million media impressions and a 42% increase in Twitter followers.