Fanta, the soda brand owned by The Coca-Cola Company, is sponsoring and co-creating a weekly digital comedy series, "Fanta For The Funny," consisting entirely of six-second Vine videos.
It's a seven-figure campaign for Fanta, aimed at appealing to teens and young adults. Fanta worked with agency 360i to create the campaign, and Starcom MediaVest Group handled the media buy.
Last year, Fanta spent just $524,000 on measured media in the U.S., according to Kantar Media. The figures exclude spending on Vine.
The first episode of "Fanta For The Funny," which rolls out Friday on CollegeHumor.com and across Fanta's social and digital channels, is comprised of dozens of Vine clips depicting gags and pratfalls from some of the platform's most popular personalities. There's no host of the show, just the brief video clips organized into vignettes around topics. In the first episode, Fanta doesn't actually appear in the Vine videos, though its branding is interspersed several times between segments. The series will run over the course of six weeks.
Brands are increasingly looking to platforms like Vine, a rising social media service owned by Twitter, to promote themselves and their products. On Vine, users post six-second clips, also called Vines. Despite -- or perhaps because of -- these time constraints, Vine has emerged as fertile ground for comedy, with hordes of young people posting humorous clips. Already, companies like General Mills, Ford and Virgin Mobile have tapped Vine stars for their campaigns.
Coca-Cola has also incorporated Vine into several campaigns meant to reach teens, including the Ahh Effect, Coca-Cola Freestyle and, most recently, the Share a Coke program, which has drawn more than 35 million "loops," or individual views, according to a spokeswoman for the company.
"Fanta For The Funny" is tapping three prominent Vine users -- AlliCattt, Jason Mendez and Mighty Duck -- to create and share content and encourage others to do so. Collectively, they have more than three million followers on Vine. Fanta plans to collect Vines submitted through the hashtag #FantaForTheFunny and use them in future episodes.
"Fanta For The Funny unites teens around their shared desire for fame and their shared passion for humor, while allowing them to be themselves and to connect their way," Racquel Mason, AVP Fanta and Flavors, said in a statement.
Fanta is the ninth best selling brand in the U.S. among carbonated soft drinks, according to Beverage Digest. Its 2% market share last year was the same as in 2012, with volume down 4%.
The Coca-Coca Company, which is facing sluggish demand for drinks in North America, saw revenue fall 1.4% to $12.6 billion for the period ended June 27. Net income fell 3% to $2.6 billion from $2.68 billion, a year earlier. Global sales volume rose 3% during the quarter.
Earlier this year, Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent promised to increase media spending and brand-building efforts by up to $1 billion by 2016.
