NZME smart tech ad campaign breaks records

The Corona Surf Campaign was named as a finalist in the INMA Global Media Awards. Photo / Getty Images

A marketing campaign for Corona beer that delivered more than 750,000 surf reports over summer has broken new ground for advertisers.

AdsWizz and NZME enabled location-targeted news style notifications with geo targeted messaging sent to Kiwi beach goers and delivered digital audio to listeners across iHeartRadio to deliver the "Corona Surf Reports" in real time.

The branded surf reports were designed to support Corona's long-standing call to Kiwis "from where you'd rather be" and to be hyper relevant to the beer brand's intended audience.

NZME leveraged AdsWizz's technology to run the campaign, including Geolocation, integrated NZME segments for age targeting the 25+ age group and Dynamic Content Optimisation with Live Event API from AdsWizz.

In all, 751,00 ads were delivered over the summer, 95 per cent of them via mobile.

"Thanks to the brilliant functionality of iHeartRadio, we were able to create individually-targeted content delivered in close proximity to the locations our beachgoers were heading to, we were able to deliver the immediacy and relevance Corona Lion NZ was looking for," NZME chief revenue officer Paul Hancox said.

"On the face of it the brief was pretty simple – to improve our "brand that appeals to me" relevancy scores by bringing to life our iconic summer themed strapline "from where you'd rather be" in a disruptive and unique way," Lion NZ's Ray Schultz said.

"The end result that the Adswizz and NZME teams created with the Corona surf audio was incredibly innovative, enabled us to reach our audience in an occasion based relevant manner and ultimately delivered our "From where you'd rather be" message perfectly. More importantly it delivered the result we were after, with a 2 per cent improvement in our relevancy scores."

NZME head of digital audio, James Butcher, said audio was a powerful channel for advertisers and more brands were looking to digital audio as a core part of their marketing activity.

The Corona Surf Campaign was named as a finalist in the INMA Global Media Awards, and will be relaunched for the up-coming ski and snowboard season.