MiO does NXNE

MiO's core benefit is to give people control when adding flavour to their water. It wanted to apply that benefit to its lead sponsorship of North by Northeast (NXNE), Canada's premier music festival, and own the conversation in places its target — male millennials — would be.

Male millennials believe in breaking convention and defending their originality. They've seen and maybe even shared MiO's past ads, but don't yet have a MiO bottle in their pocket at all times.

During NXNE, MiO was everywhere. Taxi created a 360° campaign with multiple touchpoints, but the main thrust was MiO POV, an app that let fans broadcast live video from their phones straight to the outdoor concert venue's mainstage screens, in real time, with no delay.

But in order to truly make it an immersive experience, it also streamed live to five more traditional video billboard screens surrounding the outdoor concert area. Basically, it crowdsourced the concert coverage, and put a video camera in every fan's hand. A live production crew monitored the feeds and pushed them live all night.

The app hit an impressive 9.12% download rate even though it was only usable during the show.

As a result, MiO dominated the conversation around NXNE. The brand was mentioned in conjunction with the festival significantly more than the other title sponsors. The sponsorship was featured in 371 traditional media stories, 80% of which were national.

It also received 31.6 million social media impressions, 30 million paid impressions and 403 million quality-earned impressions. During NXNE, MiO gave out nearly 64,000 samples, delivering on its goal of getting product into the hands of the target.