Ocean Spray Brings Vacation Experience Via Sampling Tour

Ocean Spray is taking consumers on vacation—a vacation from their normal diet beverages—via a mobile sampling tour to promote its new diet juice drinks.

Ocean Spray’s Take a Vacation from Ordinary Diet Drinks vehicle is moving across the country, touting the brand’s first-ever diet juice drinks, Cranberry Spray and Orange Citrus Spray. The vehicle offers visitors a taste of a vacation experience featuring a massage treatment area, music and free diet Ocean Spray drinks.

Under the tour, consumers will receive free beverage samples, $1-off coupons for the diet juice drinks and five-minutes massages in the tour vehicle. The eight-city tour, which stopped in Boston and New York last week, will visit Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Miami, Los Angeles and San Francisco before concluding in Chicago July 2-4.

“Trial is a huge driver of these types of products,” said Ocean Spray spokesperson Sharon Newcomb. “We’re trying to get people to take a little vacation from their ordinary beverage and try Ocean Spray, to try something different.”

Arnold Brand Promotions, Boston, handles the tour. The agency expects to distribute more than 100,000 samples as part of the tour, Mary McLaughlin, VP-group director for Arnold, said.

As part of the tour, Ocean Spray is running an online scratch and win game at OceanSpray.com. To play, consumers register and scratch off four squares off of a 25-square virtual game board. Consumers who match all four symbols in the squares will win an Apple iPod Shuffle, a $100 Spafinder.com gift certificate or a $100 gift card to Bath & Body Works. Each time consumers play the scratch and win game, they will be entered in a grand-prize drawing for a seven-night Caribbean Cruise for two. Two grand-prize drawings will take place on Aug. 5. The online game ends July 31.

Ocean Spray launched its diet juice drinks in March. The fruit juice drinks have five calories per eight-ounce serving. The Lakeville-Middleboro, MA-based company will likely roll out a new diet flavor next spring, Newcomb said.

P.r., radio spots, print ads in People magazine and More magazine and online materials support. Interactive marketing agency Brandmovers, Inc., Atlanta handles the online game; Zenith Media, Boston, handles radio spots.

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