A Bird’s Eye View: Celsius @ Tough Mudder

For a majority of people, finding a fitness routine can be a long process. Not only does it require motivation to find a lifestyle that is sustainable, but the options related to approaching fitness are endless.

In the past, fitness used to be isolated to intimidating gyms and pretentious juice bars, but today it is much more than that. Recent generations have turned fitness into a lifestyle, focusing on one’s overall well-being rather than only considering physical appearance. It’s not enough to just be active. Millennials and Gen Z are looking for brands that align with their way of life, including what they put in their bodies.

Seeing an opportunity, health beverage brand CELSIUS was born. The company created products that uses natural ingredients to give health-conscious consumers energy while increasing metabolism and improving endurance. Rather than simply suppling drinks, the brand sought to be a partner for active people, with the mission to make every customer’s workout work harder for them. In fact, CELSIUS has been studied by six U.S-accredited scientific research facilities. The brand chose to put its product on the line to secure customers’ confidence and trust.

Rising to the Challenge

For CELSIUS’s third year partnering with Tough Mudder, the company wanted to find a partner that would help them not only capture an audience, but align with the brand’s mission, vision and positioning. A Little Bird answered the call with a human-centric approach. Drawing inspiration from both Tough Mudder and CELSIUS, A Little Bird sought to create a seamless partnership between the two brands to bring CELSIUS to life.

A Little Bird wanted to showcase CELSIUS as an ideal energy source for those leading healthy and active lifestyles, and as the perfect partner for the grueling Tough Mudder challenge that attendees were about to take on. But instead of a mass-sampling program, A Little Bird created an immersive brand experience complete with three warm-up stations, a CELSIUS tasting bar, and Instagrammable moments for consumers to capture their crowning achievements.

Warm-Up Stations

Knowing that people warm-up in different ways, three different stations were created to ensure that every consumer was able to get ready for the race with CELSIUS. For one of the warm-up stations, a bike challenge emphasized cooperation – a key to successfully completing the Tough Mudder obstacle course. The challenge to all Tough Mudders was to ride the CELSIUS stationary bike (3 bikers at a time) for as long and as quickly as possible. Individual cities were pitted against each other to see which could bike the furthest.

In addition to the bike challenge, a cone agility challenge added another level of gamification to the foot print. The third station was a brand ambassador-led stretch session. This created an opportunity for groups and individuals to practice teamwork and have fun.

Tasting Bar

The tasting bar featured all 9 flavors of the core CELSIUS product line and all 5 flavors of the HEAT line. To give consumers a personalized and fun experience, we created the “Find Your Flavor” quiz to help people decide which beverage best suited their active lifestyle.

Can’t Stops Here

To demonstrate that CELSIUS is ‘The Ultimate Fitness Partner’, we created a wall where participants could leave their doubts behind. Attendees used branded ‘hi-five’ stickers to jot down their fears and leave the activation space with the confidence that they were unstoppable.

Delivering Results

Having kicked-off in April, the first activation proved to be a huge success. Not only were 10,000+ samples distributed, we actively engaged thousands of Tough Mudders through the different stations built into the activation footprint. ALB was able to provide CELSIUS with an engaging activation that built immense brand awareness and resulted in actionable consumer data.