Liquid I.V. is gearing up for its first-ever Super Bowl ad and the brand’s chief marketing officer Stacey Andrade-Wells couldn’t be more thrilled.
“This is a very big moment for us,” says Andrade-Wells. “The ad came about to shake up hydration complacency and get people to think differently about listening to their bodies. We’re also hoping it will get a couple of laughs.”
The Super Bowl ad stems from brand research that found that eight in 10 Americans have “hydration regret,” meaning they wish they were better about staying hydrated. While most consumers want to do better, their busy lifestyles often lead to “hydration complacency,” explains Andrade-Wells.
Liquid I.V. is tackling the issue by highlighting the seven signs of dehydration –thirst, brain fog, fatigue, nausea, headaches, irritability, yellow pee. Their insight found that 40% of consumers have Googled “what does the color of my pee mean?” and more than half have “hydration relief” when they see clear or pale yellow pee. Liquid I.V.’s research found that 59% of Americans look at their pee in the toilet before they flush and 71% of millennials see yellow pee as a clear sign of dehydration.
“It always comes back to hydration as a really important need in people’s wellness routines and in their lives,” explains Andrade-Wells.
EJAE from K-Pop Demon Hunters dropped a :15 teaser on her Instagram account.
Andrade-Wells will be speaking at the Brand Innovators Sports Marketing Summit during Super Bowl Week at Reddit in San Francisco February 4-6.
Prior to joining Liquid I.V. four years ago, Andrade-Wells spent more than seven years at Procter & Gamble across numerous brands. Brand Innovators caught up with Andrade-Wells from her office in Los Angeles to discuss the Super Bowl ad and how the brand is hoping to break through to a wider audience. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you decide to work with EJAE from K-Pop Demon Hunters on the teaser?
We felt like the partnership with EJAE was a really important tie to culture. Liquid I.V. has always had very strong ties in the entertainment industry. Music has always been very core to the brand. What EJAE was able to do with K-Pop Demon Hunters in the fall was absolutely taking over the cultural zeitgeist. It felt like a really natural fit. She’s also a lover and a user of the brand. There’s nothing more organic than finding a spokesperson and an advocate who can speak very authentically about the benefits of the product.
Can you talk about who you are hoping to reach with this campaign?
Addressing dehydration is a universal need. It’s something that everybody equally experiences. And so finding a way to make sure that we’re making hydration accessible and that we’re supporting everybody on their wellness journey is really important for us. The music selection was a very intentional choice to make this campaign relevant across generations. This was our opportunity to really transcend generations and create something that feels universally relevant for people.
A Super Bowl ad is a huge undertaking, what business goals are tied to this media buy?
We know that Liquid I.V. has about 37% national awareness and 18.5% household penetration right now. That means there’s still a lot of headroom for us. We know from consumers that there’s still a large percentage of the United States that has high interest in trying a functional hydration product. We really want to find ways to dial up that national awareness and have that translate to conversion and trial. What’s incredible about Liquid I.V. is that for roughly every two people who are aware of the brand, one of them is actively buying it. That’s an incredible conversion rate.
We want to continue to maintain that as we scale and grow. This is a great opportunity to really dial up that awareness on a national stage with a lot of retail support. We have a very large presence also on our D2C platform and we’re complementing this with Super Bowl-timed promotions to make sure that we are incentivizing that trial. It’s both a combination of increasing our national awareness, but also having that convert to trial and ultimately sales growth.
How are you showing up at retail?
Retail is always a very big component of all of our marketing campaigns. We know that this is a great awareness opportunity, but ultimately we want people to change their behaviors and we want this to turn into a big moment of trial for the brand. We wanted to make sure that we had a very big presence in all of our different retailers. We call it painting the store blue. If you go into a number of different retailers right now – Target, Walmart, a lot of different drug or even convenience retailers – you will see a lot of Liquid I.V. Super Bowl-themed displays on the floor.
We want to make sure that we’re stopping people outside of the aisle, that we’re sending them messages about gearing up on their hydration solutions in time for Super Bowl Sunday.
The presence on those retail floors has been a very large portion of our entire campaign. We have displays really anywhere and everywhere that consumers could have an opportunity to try the product.
