Empowering a Seamless Marketing Crossover for Netflix and Cupcake Wines

This winter we upped the ante and welcomed Netflix to the team for Cupcake's thrilling "Love is Wine" campaign—an exhilarating crossover featuring the popular Netflix show "Love is Blind."

In anticipation of the Season 6 premiere of Love is Blind, Netflix partnered with Cupcake Vineyards to produce a marketing campaign and sweepstakes, alongside an all new "Love Is Wine" Chardonnay that includes QR codes under each cap. To bring this campaign to life, we developed a custom platform that users can access by scanning Cupcakes's QR codes to register for an exciting sweepstakes.

Upon scanning, users access an augmented reality (AR) experience that grants them entry to the Yeti-built "Love is Wine" platform. Within this platform, users can interact with the brand in various ways including  interactively entering the campaign sweepstakes, which offers the opportunity to win the daily prize of a Love is Blind Golden Goblet or the grand prize—a trip to the Playa Del Carmen resort showcased on the show.

Challenge

As mentioned earlier, Yeti and Cupcake have partnered on various campaigns. Our initial collaboration involved constructing a reusable, custom platform designed to engage millions of Cupcake customers through various marketing campaigns. While this initial build led to several successful Cupcake campaigns, the increasing popularity and success of these sweepstakes demanded several enhancements. To provide a more dynamic experience for both users and the Cupcake team, it was necessary for us to undertake several improvements, included creating advanced capabilities for data and analytics management, as well as the ability to host multiple sweepstakes year-round.

When designing the Love is Wine platform, we were challenged with creating an online experience that visually reflects the hit Netflix show, “Love is Blind”. Moreover, because Cupcake's goal with this campaign was to encourage users to revisit the platform with each new bottle of Cupcake wine purchased, it was crucial that we create an engaging online environment that captivates users in a way that encourages them to return regularly to submit fresh sweepstakes entries.

Solution

While successful for several campaigns, the Cupcake app has faced unique growth challenges, including a necessary evolution from a summer-centric sweepstakes experience to a year-round, dynamic platform capable of hosting multiple sweepstakes.

To achieve this, we introduced the ability to switch experiences based on set dates, by adding a “SweepsType” value within the app’s server. This change will facilitate the expansion into new themes like “Love is Wine” (LiW) and “World of Joy.”

To create a unique, branded experienced, the app underwent a visual refresh, with branding to match that of “Love is Blind” and Cupcake’s new Love is Wine product, delivering an appealing, fresh design that elevates the overall user experience.

The objective behind the Love is Wine campaign is to allow users to engage with the Cupcake brand in an exciting way. While the campaign is ultimately a sweepstakes with a multitude of prizes, it was important for us to create an experience that went beyond merely signing up for a sweepstakes entry, and which motivated users to continually re-visit the campaign.

To achieve this, the Love is Wine online environment includes an engaging AR experience that allows users to view a Love is Wine stage, and open virtual doors for a chance to win one of the Golden Goblets featured on the show - or a trip to the Playa Del Carmen resort featured on the show.

To increase user engagement, we additionally added an instant winner feature to the app, which allows user to submit daily entries with the potential for an instant win. Upon winning, users are provided with a unique AR experience, created in partnership with Blippar, that showcases a Golden Goblet, the official wine glass of Love is Blind.  This new instant win feature was made possible though an integration with our prize fulfillment partner, AVID AMG, to manage entries, capture win responses, and convey this data for the AR showcase.

To ensure that users are visiting the Love is Wine online environment solely through the scanning of a QR code, we obtained a spreadsheet of all of the valid QR codes that had been generated and printed on cupcake bottle caps. We then created a script that uploads these QR codes into our database in such a way that it can be verified that real bottle caps being scanned.

Beyond this, QR codes can now be associated with specific sweep types so that for specific marketing purposes, scanning bottles can redirect to any campaign, even while another sweepstake is active.

Additionally, the Cupcake team wanted to gather analytics and the user information provided during the app’s onboarding process. To achieve this, we set up a basic integration with Google Analytics that captures hundreds of standard data points and events, and created an API that allows all of the information captured within the app to be sent to Cupcake’s Mailchimp account.

To provide the Cupcake team with additional analytics and insights into how their app is being used and how experiences gain and retain users, we integrated PostHog Analytics. This new tool allows Cupcake to see how users are utilizing the app, and includes specific dashboards that display the number of new and returning users, the number of scans and rescans, and the average number of entries each user has submitted.

Outcome

The Love is Wine campaign has been an enormous success, with a national sellout of Cupcakes “Love is Wine” QR code bottles. The sweepstakes runs until April 30th.