Bev Solutions: In the Field
Case Study: “A Moving Experience” by Andrew Kaplan

Highlighted blurb next to Skyy Blue Mobile Billboard Photo reads:

A mobile ad for Skyy Blue lights up the night, drawing the attention of restaurant and club-goers in Miami’s trendy South Beach district.

Any marketer will tell you that it’s become harder than ever to reach a targeted demographic group with advertising campaigns. Audiences have simply become too fragmented as cable channels and the Web pull viewers away from the networks and print media.

Aware of this, the marketers of SABMiller’s upscale flavored malt beverage Skyy Blue decided to take their brand directly to those consumers most likely to drink it – literally. The brand launched a mobile ad campaign that has its eye-catching, high quality creative appearing on 22 by 10 foot ads up and down the streets of six U.S. cities: Miami, San Diego, Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington, DC.

“They drive through the cities, but we also provide directions on certain areas that are appropriate to visit,” says Skyy Blue’s brand manager, Laura Emory. “We can suggest that certain nightlife areas would be a good fit for the mobile billboards, and that way we are able to reach the legal drinking age consumer in that nightlife environment.”

The mobile ad campaign has been organized by the New York City-based Mobile Ad Group. Sam Kaplan, the company’s vice president of sales and marketing, says it takes two forms: one on the side of actual delivery trucks and the other on mobile billboards that, like they sound, are simply billboards on wheels.

“What’s really interesting about this medium is that we can use third-party trucking companies to carry the message, turning them into a virtual fleet of delivery trucks for that product,” Kaplan says.

That’s during the day. At night, a lighted billboard can be parked in front of a nightclub.

The ads will be coming to a city near you this summer. “This showing is going to be amazing – the weather’s going to get warmer, people will be out on the street and here comes this beautiful European beach scene which is very upscale. It’s going to be unexpected, creating quite an impact for SABMiller’s Skyy Blue,” says Kaplan.