If you were at Martino Flynn last summer, you couldn’t go a day without hearing someone talking about Karma. Dozens of employees across multiple teams were completely immersed in bringing Karma Wellness Water—a delicious line of natural, nutrient-enhanced water—to life.
The creator of the world’s first energy drink—Jolt Cola—was embarking on a new venture to create the world’s healthiest beverage with a new local start-up company, Karma Culture, LLC. The principle of karma is based on cause and effect. If you do something positive, you’ll get something positive in return. At Martino Flynn, we set out to spread good karma as far as we could reach.
Since Karma Culture was starting from scratch and needed help with everything—from messaging to brand positioning and creative design to public relations—we had a long road ahead of us, but one that we’d traveled before. This was a relatively new category in the beverage industry and Karma was the first of its kind to be introduced on the East Coast so the opportunities seemed endless, as well as challenging.
The driving force behind Karma is the fact that water-soluble vitamins lose their potency while sitting in water. Additionally, those vitamins suffer degradation when they are subjected to UV rays, oxygen, or heat—causing premixed vitamin drinks to lose their potency over time. After becoming experts in the land of vitamins, the agency was tasked with building the Karma story for consumers, and with countless hours of careful craftsmanship and consideration, they landed on the tag line, “Vitamins. Fresh Squeezed.”
With a clear message and vision, the plan was to launch the beverage in Rochester—where it was created with the help of more than 20 local companies—and roll it out regionally, and then nationally over the next 12 months. In the months leading up to the local launch, Martino Flynn launched a complete integrated campaign—including print, web/video, social media, and public relations. The launch was successful, and several elements of the campaign were recognized at the 2012 PRSA Rochester PRism Awards, including:
- PRism Award – External Video Campaign, corporate category: “Meet Karma Wellness Water”
- PRism Award – News Release, corporate category: “Karma Wellness Water Trade News Release”
- PRism Award – Press Kit, corporate category: “Karma Press Kit”
- Award of Excellence – Photography, corporate category: “Karma Wellness Water Plume Photography”
- Award of Excellence – Social Media, corporate category: “Transform Social Media into Wellness”
- Award of Excellence – Special Event/Observance, corporate category: “Vitamins, Fresh Squeezed”
- Award of Excellence – Website, corporate category: “Discovering Wellness on the Web with Karma”
The success of Karma Wellness Water to date is a result of our truly integrated team working together to create a solid campaign. Stay tuned for additional Blip! posts about Karma. We’ll dive deeper into the specific elements of the campaign—and the hard work that made them possible.
