Celebrating Tip Top’s 75th Birthday

Seventy five years ago, an innovative pair set up a small ice-cream parlour in the heart of Wellington. Flash forward almost a century, and Tip Top is still a national icon, adored by summer-loving Kiwis all over the world.

To celebrate Tip Top’s 75th birthday anniversary, Porter Novelli were briefed to reignite our nation’s love affair by making 2011 the Tip Top Summer of Love. The plan was to engage the New Zealand public by taking them on a series of dates – including the re-launch of the Classic Mint Trumpet and Grapefruit and Lemon Fruju, the Tip Top 2010 Scoop Index, Tip Top and Surf Life Savings partnership, the Great Ice-cream Hunt, the launch of the All Blacks Hokey Pokey Trumpet as well as the record-breaking Tip Top 75th Birthday 50,000 Jelly Tip nationwide giveaway.

Our mission was to ensure every New Zealander got a taste of the Tip Top 75th birthday celebrations, and reignited the familiar love all Kiwis hold for the brand.  In collaboration with our above the line marketing partners, we set to work developing a range media strategies to engage the nation across all forms of media, reminding New Zealand of the quintessential Tip Top summer experience.

The summer of love went off with a bang with Tip Top captivating the nation. Major feature pieces were obtained in fifteen magazines, including New Zealand Women’s Day, North & South, Next, The Listener, Farmers Weekly, Taste, Marketing Magazine, FMCG and more. A whopping thirty-six newspaper pieces covered the summers activities - including front cover placement on the Sunday Star Times and Sunday Magazine. Coverage on thirty of the nation’s top radio stations, and TV exposure with multiple pieces on TVNZ’s Breakfast, Prime News, Cue TV and Small Blacks TV, were responsible for a reach of over 5 million.

The main attraction of the 2011 summer festivities was the Tip Top 75th Birthday Jelly Tip giveaway - the biggest ice cream giveaway New Zealand had ever seen. In a nation-wide event promoted solely through PR we simultaneously distributed 50,000 Jelly in 75 minutes at eleven locations around the country –a massive logistical undertaking, but a challenge that Porter Novelli succeeded in. Securing Tip Top birthday messages from Prime Minister John Key and former Tip Top model Rachel Hunter, the event profile was boosted, while Tim Shadbolt was secured to assist with the Invercargill giveaway. The results were incredible - coverage was obtained on eight major mainstream radio stations, three major news shows and over eight daily newspapers and three weekend papers, while a Porter Novelli driven social media campaign was implemented with a reach of over 210,000 Facebook and Twitter users.

The campaign was a delicious success. With a total reach of over 18 million and an EAV of over $900,000, we showed the nation that when it comes to Tip Top, age is just a number.

Porter Novelli team: Louise Wright, Joanna Glover, Will Seal