Nudie Addict Hits The Bottle
The Age
Thursday September 27, 2007
The natural fruit juice company turns to customers to give it the marketing edge. By Katie Cincotta.
IT'S a brave brand that invites customers to contribute to product development and advertising, but that's exactly the kind of grassroots marketing that has made Nudie famous.The spirited juice company put out a call to Nudie drinkers nationwide to unearth "Australia's Biggest Nudie Addict", receiving more than 80,000 entries by SMS and online.Sydneysider Nadia Pocock was declared the reigning juice junkie for an image of herself bathing in Nudie juice, with an accompanying poem confessing her daily addiction to the fruit crushes made without water, sugar or additives.Ms Pocock won $10,000, a year's supply of juice and her own label and character, which is in production for a year."I entered as a dare, not thinking it would get anywhere, and now I open the fridge and there's a dozen of my little cartoons looking at me," says the 21-year-old.Nudie's marketing manager, Sally Draycott, says the competition is one of Nudie's many consumer-centric campaigns designed to intimately connect with customers, allowing them to participate creatively in the brand."The more that you engage with customers the better it is for sales and marketing. Everyone who is involved becomes a brand ambassador for you. We have people writing in if their local shop doesn't have their favourite flavour any more. And the consumer feels that if you listen to them, they're important," says Ms Draycott. Nudie's marketing and design team worked closely with Ms Pocock to design a character that captured her interests and personality, picking up on the bathing theme from her entry. Nadia's Mango and Passionfruit Nudie features her in the bath, with her beloved dog Pugsley - making her a star on shelves in more than 6000 outlets."They really got to know my personality and put it out there to complement their brand, which was quite impressive," she says.As a former advertising account executive at Singletons, now studying for her master's in arts management, Ms Pocock admires Nudie's personal marketing. "Having been involved with this competition, I can see how a novelty idea can cut through the clutter," she says.Having survived an arson attack to its manufacturing plant, Nudie has still managed to grow from five staff in 2003 to 60 full-time employees, but still doesn't have the marketing budget for mass media. "We don't have the marketing budget of the larger corporations, so we try to get maximum bang for buck, which is why we have to be more creative," says Ms Draycott.The latest evolution of Nudie's Addict campaign is now calling on fans to nominate a new fruit or flavour, which will launch next year. The back-to-basics juice is also riding the user-generated content wave by inviting creative people to submit a fruit-inspired video on Supervirals.com. "We're always looking to do things a bit differently and keep the consumer on board and having fun with the brand," says Ms Draycott.While others might consider consumer-generated marketing risky, Nudie insists its brand is in good hands. "Most people are wary of handing their brand over to the consumers, but we've done it from the beginning. The more people that join us, the more people try the drink," Ms Draycott says.
© 2007 The Age