As temperatures heat up, so do marketing efforts around hydration. But Liquid I.V. isn’t satisfied to just win over consumers in the summer: It wants to win them every day at the moment when their hydration needs are greatest.
Specifically, the Unilever-owned hydration brand is targeting consumers who have an afternoon slump around 4 p.m., which the brand calls the most dehydrating hour of the day. The cleverly named “I.V. O’Clock” campaign is part of a marketing strategy that has helped Liquid I.V. quadruple in size since it was acquired by the CPG giant in 2020.
“People don't realize that when they're later in the afternoon and energy is at an all time low, that sometimes hydration is a leading cause of that, so we want to take the opportunity to really disrupt a daily hydration moment,” said Aaron Jones, Liquid I.V.’s vice president of e-commerce and media.
Liquid I.V. kicked off the campaign at one of the world’s largest spaces for an experiential activation, New York City’s Times Square, on June 4. Just before 4 p.m., the brand took over every screen with “error” messages and encouraged those passing by to look out for a refresh at the top of the hour.
“Obviously Times Square is extremely loud, extremely chaotic, but in that moment, it went super quiet,” Jones said. “Being able to essentially hear a pin drop in Times Square just showed me that … we got people's attention.”
When the clock struck four, 50 Kiwibot-powered delivery robots doled out reusable water bottles, 15,000 samples and directions to nearby Hope Hydration stations. For the next half hour, Liquid I.V. campaign assets took over screens to prolong the moment and remind people about their daily hydration needs.
“All of our data shows that while consumers might find us in a trigger moment, i.e. fitness, nightlife, heat, what is driving our growth is that people are transitioning to daily hydration and finding moments to bring Liquid I.V. into their everyday life,” Jones said.
Scale, synergies with Unilever
The Times Square takeover was produced by ad agency Zambezi and is part of a larger summer campaign that highlights the science behind the brand’s Hydration Multiplier product. The campaign includes dedicated assets on social and streaming channels, plus a media integration with reality dating show “Love Island.”
The campaign’s time-specific hook dovetails nicely around contextual targeting and other tools that allow marketers to target around time and other conditions across digital products.
“We are going to be focusing a lot at that 4 p.m. window, obviously, depending on what time zone you're in,” Jones said. “On top of that, we're trying to orient ourselves a little bit to think about making ‘I.V. O’Clock’ a little bit more of our DNA, as well.’”
The campaign also comes as Liquid I.V. continues to be a bright spot for its parent company. Now the No. 1 powdered hydration brand in the U.S., Liquid I.V. is the largest label in Unilever’s Health & Wellbeing sector. Unilever has dubbed Liquid I.V. a “Power Brand” and is aiming to make it a $1 billion brand in the near future.
“We're in lockstep across the board,” Jones said of the relationship between brand and parent. “It's been a fantastic relationship for us in terms of getting access to scale and synergies that we haven't had before.”
