Life Experience swings in for Grolsch

Life Experience, the newly launched experiential division of integrated marketing agency Life, is opening its doors with the roll out of a multichannel campaign for premium continental lager brand, Grolsch.

Grolsch is targeting regional pub goers with the ‘Swingtop Challenge’, a campaign involving experiential, social, PR and promotional activity in Grolsch’s biggest push for 2013 to increase trial of the iconic lager.

The campaign kicks off with a PR launch event on 31st July in Brighton followed by a three month roadshow targeting Brighton, London and Bristol.

Consumers will be invited to take part in the Swingtop Challenge by stepping into a 2.1sqm interactive game cube. From here, they must open as many virtual bottles of Grolsch as possible in 60 seconds for the chance to score points and win prizes including a trip for two to Amsterdam.

Other prizes include Beats by Dre Headphones, Wowee Speakers and Grolsch branded items.  To play, gamers must register their details with attending brand ambassadors at the event to receive a branded wristband which links to their personal Facebook page. They then ‘tap’ the game station on entry to link the game to their Facebook account. On finishing, they tap it again to allow the experience and their score to be shared on Facebook.

Points from each game will appear on a live leaderboard showing the latest high scores and prize draw entries via a large digital screen at events.   Brand ambassadors at each venue will also be sampling and handing out money-off coupons to redeem on the night.  All aspects of the activity, playing the game, drinking Grolsch and the free prize draws will drive consumers to share their experience of Grolsch via the brand’s Facebook page, facebook.com/grolschuk.

The consumer push is backed by an on-trade campaign designed to engage and educate bar owners stocking Grolsch.

Sophie Erskine, brand manager at Grolsch said: “Grolsch is an iconic brand and therefore needs marketing activity which demonstrates its unique and individual style. So we’re putting consumers to the test with a fun and interactive game, and the challenge to perfect three of the most famous Swingtop opening techniques; The Swingtop Chop, The Slice and The Booty Pop.   “Life Experience has demonstrated a unique approach to integrating experiential activity with other disciplines to create a standout campaign that works for trade and consumer.”

Life Experience delivers integrated experiential strategies across the UK and Europe. The new division, which is based in Life’s new London office, is led by head of experiential, Sarah Fleming, who joined Life in early 2013 from Iris Experience where she was a board director.   Fleming comments: “We’re delighted that the formal launch of Life Experience has seen us creating such a heavyweight experiential campaign for an incredibly iconic brand like Grolsch. The heritage of Grolsch and Molson Coors’ willingness to try new things has given us a lot of scope. But what best sums up Grolsch’s creative flair and independent spirit is the Grolsch Swingtop bottle, which is why we’ve placed the non-conformist Swingtop feature at the heart of the campaign. Grolsch is a premium brand which deserves a premium campaign.”

David Poole, managing director at Life added: “We have seen a significant increase in dedicated experiential briefs from clients, so commercially it made sense to formalise our experiential offer with the launch of a new division, Life Experience. We are talking to all of our clients about new experiential briefs and Grolsch is the first of several major pieces of work in development under the Life Experience banner.”