Context
Sprite, while enjoying strong sales, recognized a disconnect between its brand and the African American youth who form a core part of its consumer base. This disconnect stemmed from a lack of targeted content and authentic engagement with hip-hop culture, a space where Sprite has deep historical roots.
Insight
To regain relevance and trust with this crucial demographic, Sprite needed to shift its approach from simply selling soda to meaningfully contributing to the culture that its target audience valued. We recognized that authentic engagement meant listening to their voices and providing a platform for their creativity.
The Creative Strategy
Focused on empowering young, talented creators within the African American community. We aimed to develop a program that provides them with opportunities to elevate their voices and showcase their skills in the spaces where this audience was already actively consuming content and shaping hip-hop culture. We partnered with Spotify’s Rap Caviar, a leading platform for hip-hop music discovery, to create “The Break,” a content series designed to champion the passions of African American teens. This series served as a launchpad for emerging artists and creators, showcasing their stories and talents to a wider audience. “The Break” prioritized authentic storytelling, featuring genuine narratives of rising creators and avoiding overt product promotion. This approach aimed to inspire and empower the target audience, fostering a deeper connection with Sprite.
We collaborated closely with the Spotify team throughout the entire process, from defining the content’s purpose and selecting talent to shaping the overall storytelling approach. This ensured a cohesive and impactful series that resonated with both Sprite’s brand values and Rap Caviar’s audience.
Featured in “The Break” were innovative young talents like Tierra Whack, producer Nick Mira, and social media guru Jeremy Baiden. By providing them with a platform to share their journeys, the series inspired countless others and solidified Sprite’s commitment to supporting the next generation of creators.
Credits
Director Scott Lazer
Production Tre Native
Executive Producer Charlie Clark
Producers David Kwon Kim, Brandon Smith
DP: Matt Batchelor
Editor Adam Sauermilch
Creative Director Andrea Messer
Creative Strategist Tristan O'Donnell
Content Manager Luz Corona
Press
Respect Magazine
Rolling Stone Magazine
Hip Hop Wired
Results
Over 15.8 MM Impressions
3.9% sales lift vs same period last year
The ‘Sprite is cool’ metric increased by 12% among African American youth who were hip-hop fans, and the metric skyrocketed to 37%, further proving the resonance between the content and our core audience.
We learned that the more our audience saw our content, the higher the lift: Those who saw our content 10+ times had a ‘Sprite is cool’ lift of 19% vs. those who saw our content fewer times.
With very minimal branding throughout the content, recall saw a 49% lift among the exposed. This almost doubled the recall lift benchmark on Spotify, effectively placing us back on top of AA youth’s minds.
Our audience loved the content. Even after the campaign ended, the episodes stayed on the RapCaviar list for 3 more weeks, whereas previous videos RapCaviar produced would remain for only 1 week before being pushed off due to engagement algorithms.
Social posts promoting the content had an engagement rate that was 73% above the benchmark.
Budget
USD $1 Million to $10 Million
