Frucor’s Maximus is the lord of sports drinks. It was launched in 2013, and was quick to assert itself in the Australian Isotonic Sports Drink category, which was previously dominated by two brands with 98% market share. Since then, the brand has become well known among its predominately male audience for its value for money, quirky limited edition offerings and provocative marketing campaigns.

Maximus’ latest campaign subtly underscores the brand’s position in the market while it the applauds the men who drink it. The campaign is called Award A Lord. Urbandictionary.com defines a Lord as “The true man. A rare legend. What perfection strives to be.” Maximus has created nearly 30 different types of Lord for the promotion, so every one of its customers can relate to at least one. And true to Maximus’ irreverent humour, there are tongue-in-cheek Lords such as Dad-Bod Lord, Buff Lord, Sweaty Lord and Dating Lord.

00

The campaign includes a competition in which people choose the Maximus #awardalord bottle that best describes them or someone they know. They then snap a pic or video of them being a Lord with the Maximus bottle in the shot and upload it to Instagram or Facebook for the chance to win $1 million.

Saltmine has developed the limited edition packaging for the on-pack consumer promotion, which features an award trophy, developed from the shield shape of the Maximus brand mark. The base of the trophy contains a type of Lord and the all-important hashtag required to enter. In addition to this, Saltmine completed the finished artwork and liaised with New Zealand based printer, Adhesif, to ensure an excellent on-pack result.

With the vast range of labels across the SKUs, the agency needed to simplify a complex process, which it did by providing one base artwork for each SKU and creating a new plate change out for the Lord text. This greatly reduced overall costs of the 8-colour flexo printing.

The challenge for Saltmine, though, was working out how the shrink-wrap distortion would affect certain design elements of the labels. The agency worked with Adhesif, using a 3D render model to estimate the approximate distortion. This was important given the legal text on pack. Saltmine created the promotional mechanics and will also manage the promotion for the duration, including prize fulfilment.

Saltmine Design Group managing partner, Sara Salter, commented, “Once again our Saltmine team has collaborated with the wider Frucor team to bring an on-point campaign for Maximus to market. We’re excited to see the campaign roll out and for the promotion results in the next couple of months.”