The Vision: From most hated to much loved
Once the third largest selling soft drink in the UK, SunnyD became the fourth most hated of all brands following negative press coverage about its low juice, high sugar content, and stories of children turning orange after drinking too much. SunnyD was sold by P&G.
The new brand owner spent three years working with a steering group of British mums to reformulate the product. New SunnyD was now all natural. But could the public forgive the brand? Our brief was to somehow bring SunnyD back from the dead.
Kids have always loved the taste and experience of SunnyD but mums had banned it from the fridge. So we needed to give mums the confidence and permission to serve the product again.
We decided that honesty was the best policy and launched with a pre-emptive PR, print and radio campaign that used the negative perceptions mums already had of SunnyD, to tell the story of how the drink had been reinvented by mums. TV was then introduced to dramatise mum's role by making her the hero, defending new SunnyD from the bad old ingredients, trying to get back into the product.
The Reality: Millward Brown scored the advertising campaign in the top 5% of campaigns they pre-test. Sales tracked up 15% year on year and household penetration increased by 2%. This is despite the fact that the price has increased by nearly 50% given the new natural formulation.
