There’s no better call to action than money in the pocket. More than 1,000 consumers in L.A. were blessed with dollar bills by Jamba’s roving street teams to use for the brand’s $1 smoothie deal on National Smoothie Day, June 21. The Blended for Everyone campaign, a follow-up to the brand’s 2024 repositioning, Hello Sunshine, challenged the idea of smoothies as wellness “status symbols” in influencer culture. Not to mention, that Jamba’s been blending them since 1990, long before they were trending.
The mission to “reclaim smoothies as something joyful and accessible” came to life in the form of effervescent brand ambassadors, bright and bold wild postings, and of course that drive-to-store. Here, we explore three top insights from the campaign with Kate Morgan, vp-marketing at Jamba.
Pointed but Playful Messaging
Jamba’s brand ethos is one of accessibility and affordability, and to be disruptive, the brand took playful jabs at pricey “wellness” competitors in the market. Leading up to the street team deployment, the brand activated an OOH campaign with 600 wheatpaste posters dispersed on surfaces across the valley as a phase one.
Messaging included statements like “Good Taste Isn’t a Trend” and “No Influencer Markup.” Stickers on posts and street stencils added a discoverable component.
“If you’re familiar with areas of downtown L.A., you have to break through when you’re showing up in a more crowded, gritty place, and that’s why we went with the simplistic headlines with bright colors, that even though they are static and printed, they have dimension,” Morgan says. “It may look a little bit retro, but that was fully intentional, it being basically a scroll-stopping experience where you see those bright colors and you’re able to read that headline in three seconds and it resonates.”
Brand Ambassadors Who Brought the Joy
Phase two, of course, was the physical passing out of dollar bills and collateral. Four to six street teams hit key cultural areas throughout the city leading up to National Smoothie Day, targeting some higher-end areas like The Grove where the messaging would especially digest well.
“Some people may have thought it was a scam, but then they were pleasantly surprised and saying, ‘Oh my gosh,’ and that’s how they’re experiencing and remembering Jamba,” Morgan says. “We worked with a fantastic group out of Los Angeles to identify what the street teams would be. They all had that passion for the brand and were very playful while also understanding how to speak about the brand and engage with the consumer, because that’s what we were there to do.”
Timing and Teamwork
Campaigns for in-store events for a certain day and time, price point and product, like in the world of food service, are “very much real-time,” Morgan says. “Consumers are not planning two weeks in advance to go get a dollar smoothie. It’s the day of that they’ll hear about it and say, ‘I’ll pop over there.’”
To that end, the effort was an integrated one among the internal teams at Jamba to roll it all out within that week. Morgan points to having teams so integrated, and the benefits of in-house p.r. and creative: “We were all basically tied at the hip working toward that same goal.” Agency: M Booth (p.r.)
Scenes from the Street Team Campaign:
