Coverage: Tropicana shoots ad in Inuvik NWT

RT @Northern_Clips: Ad-ventures to the extreme
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Tropicana shoots ad in #Inuvik #NWT #Arctic


Kirsten Murphy/Courtesy of Tropicana The Lennie family of Inuvik, N.W.T. enjoys a long-awaited moment in the sun.

[Excerpt]

Thanks to the democratic broadcasting capabilities of YouTube, the Internet has been a boon for event and stunt marketing. Brand-sponsored promotions with a handful of live viewers -- from dancing flash mobs in London's tube stations to a human stampede chasing a wheel of cheese down Whistler mountain -- can now potentially be seen by millions of people around the world.

That trend will get even bigger this year as an increasing number of brands fuse reality television with event marketing, chronicling the results in pieces of branded entertainment that can be seen in traditional and digital channels.

The medium's popularity with viewers is also raising the ante on the quality of the stunts and the relative clout of the brands behind them.

Tropicana Canada, the PepsiCoowned juice brand, embarked on its own piece of reality advertising-meets-adventure-travel last weekend when it shone a spotlight, quite literally, on Inuvik, N.W.T., which spends 30 days each winter in 24-hour darkness.

To coincide with Inuvik's annual Sunrise Festival, a local celebration of the sun's return after the dark weeks, ad agency BBDO Canada and Tropicana marketers enlisted a documentary crew to chronicle their efforts to bring a giant light-emitting balloon to the town on Jan. 9, to create a "raising of the sun."

"Tropicana has been in Canada for almost 20 years now, and it has always been known as a little bit of sunshine for Canadians, given that oranges don't grow here," explains Dale Hooper, vice-president of marketing at PepsiCo Beverages Canada.

"The whole idea was how do we bring brighter mornings to Canadians, and kick it off in a way where it is more than just a TV ad. It is about going out and doing more expedition marketing."

The 35-foot-wide helium-filled orb emitted 100,000 lumens, roughly the light output of the bright sun on a clear day, which lit up a radius of about four kilometres.

Tropicana also gave every household in the town (1,200) a carton of Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice, which retails for about $12-$13 in Inuvik. In addition to filming 30-and 60-second TV spots, BBDO also filmed a documentary short to run on a Facebook page and Tropicana.ca.The sites will also feature blogged commentary as the "brighter mornings" campaign visits locations across the country in a partnership with Breakfast Television.