Vimto Cluedo Celebrating 100 years of trade

How do you help an iconic national brand, which has been a part of all our childhoods, to celebrate its centenary and raise its profile? How do you create a party atmosphere around a promotion, while still looking to the future and increasing sales?

Simple, link it with another iconic brand from our childhood to create a fun, interactive game for all the family, with a prize that’s well worth celebrating.

The brief

With their centenary year fast approaching, Vimto approached us to create something special to help them celebrate and create awareness of their heritage. They wanted something that would raise the brand profile and increase sales, while including that vital Vimto feeling of family fun.

Ideally, they wanted this promotion to also push the key brand value of taste, from their unique secret recipe, while showing the high quality process by which Vimto is made.

The concept

Our concept was to create a commemorative adaptation of the family board game 'Cluedo'. 'Vimto Cluedo', is set in the Vimto factory at the time when preparations for the Centenary Birthday Party were underway.

This allowed us to highlight the range of products, the unique flavour of the secret recipe and the personality of the brand. By moving both the educational and sales messages into the game environment, we were able to convey far more information without losing the interest of the consumer.

Cluedo and Vimto were a perfect fit from the start, both enjoying a long tradition and holding a fond place in the hearts and minds of generations of British families.

The production

The concept was realised in two ways, firstly as an innovative, fully playable board game along similar lines to the original Cluedo, and secondly as an online game, complete with leader board and free prize draw.

The board game was designed from scratch by the A&P team, under licence from Hasbro. Our designers created a full range of new characters, such as Sydney Shlurper and Fizzy Lizzy, and a whole new board, including the mixing room, the fruit selection room and the secret vault where the famous Vimto recipe is stored.

This game style strongly supported the ‘family values’ aim of the brief, bringing everyone together around the table, while keeping the brand front of mind in a quirky and approachable way. The layout also promoted many of the brand values, from the high fruit content to the exclusive taste of the secret recipe.

This game was available to purchase, with a reduced rate through coupon collection, to stimulate additional purchases of the Vimto product range.

The online version, based on our new Vimto Cluedo characters and settings, contained a series of nine interactive games, set against the clock, with a leaderboard of the fastest times. Consumers were invited to solve the case of the missing Vimto Centenary birthday cake, by passing through each of the nine levels, with the chance to win a £10,000 reward in the process. Each game, created exclusively by the A&P digital design team, once again highlighted the many benefits of the Vimto brand.

The inclusion of the leader board, combined with the many other interactive features of the game, added an exciting element of competition which kept visitors coming back to the site time and time again to try to improve their position.

The online version was also used to launch the Vimto Centenary at the prestigious headquarters of both Asda and Sainsbury's. Eye catching stands were erected in prime positions in the atria, with live-linked computers to allow key staff, such as buyers, brand managers and distributers, to try the game and get to know the promotion in more detail. Naturally they were also offered a 'shlurple of the purple' by the characters from the Vimto Cluedo game, creating a real feeling of theatre on the day.

Such activity is notoriously difficult to arrange, but both Asda and Sainsbury’s were very impressed with what A&P created for Vimto. As Marion Muir, Marketing Manager from Asda commented.

The result

The client was delighted with the original and innovative thinking behind Vimto Cluedo and the launch pad it provided for their centenary celebrations.

The online game attracted over 85,000 players and substantial numbers of the board game have been sold.

Together the two have significantly raised the profile of the brand, underpinning the key brand values of fun, heritage and taste and, of course, creating a significant increase in Vimto sales.

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