Evian’s Roller Babies Ad – The Best Video Ad ever!

Advertisements, now-a-days, are not only for promotion but as a means to connect with consumers. Increasing number of brands are using emotions to communicate their brand personality to the consumers. Also, most of the brands are shifting to online channels (like YouTube) to promote this message rather than conventional TVCs. This is mainly because of higher ROI and greater reach offered by online channels. In this article, we will learn how Evian used these two strategies to sell mineral water!

About the brand and the campaign:

Evian is a French brand of mineral water. ‘Live Young’ was Evian’s first ever global campaign. It was one the first brands to launch YouTube-exclusive ad campaign. With their Roller babies’ advertisement, they set the way for a new strategy of seeding content, testing creative, and building on a global brand.  It was so successful that in 2009 the Guinness Book of World Records officially declared Roller Babies as the most viewed online ad. With over 100 million total views, Roller Babies demonstrates the ability of online video to reach far beyond that of traditional media alone. By focusing on digital channels this campaign made a huge impact at a cost far less than that of its traditional counterparts.

About the Ad:

The Roller Babies ad features babies that are about one year old. Throughout the ad they dance to the tune of Sugarhill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight on roller skaters. The advertisement aims to represent their water as the one that can keep adults young at heart. They accomplish that by associating their ads with baby dances, which can symbolize energy and youthfulness at the same time. By focusing on that message, Evian brings its audience’s attention to a societal norm: everyone wants to become young again as they gradually grow old. Their slogan “Evian, Live young” that’s repeated at the end of the advertisement shows their positioning. Through the campaign, advertisers want their audience to learn the art of living young by consuming Evian water.

You can watch the advertisement here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQcVllWpwGs

Decoding the Ad:

The main purpose of the ‘Live Young’ campaign was to build on the concept of youth. They used this emotional benefit to connect with the consumers and strengthen the brand relationship.

We generally associate babies with adjectives like cute, young and active. Evian created a connection between Evian and babies. The “Live Young” slogan was used to direct its audience to read the desired meaning of the babies, which is to be young. This quality of the babies was transferred to the product through the ad. This way Evian created a cultural meaning for its brand; the youthfulness of babies became a brand identity for Evian.

We can see how advertisers may purposefully make the ad so irrational and strange to a point that the image may seem humorous. With the combination of gimmicks and bizarreness in the ad, both serve to level out the other. In other words, the cute babies may make it easier for the audience to accept the irrationality in the ads and drive awareness of Evian across the world in a fun and innovative way. Activity was focused primarily on digital channels as Evian’s ad heritage was not familiar to most people outside of France, and therefore could not be built upon.

Achievements:

Roller babies ad has been awarded the Guinness Book of World Records award for the most viewed online video advertisement. It has also won top honors from Time magazine as the #1 TV ad of the 2009 and a recognition on TBS’ Funniest Commercials of the Year. It has 84,613,402 views on YouTube till date.

Key Takeaways:

1.       By creating buzz online and utilizing social networks and having great content, Evian was able to leverage their online ad to its absolute fullest for spreading its marketing messages globally.

2.       By focusing on these web-centric tactics Evian also saw a huge return on investment.

3.       It also created a brand identity on which future campaigns could be built upon. The goal for new iterations of the ‘Live Young’ campaign is to move toward delivering the message that by drinking Evian one feels youthful