What happened when Bubba took its new brand identity to Lollapalooza

Jimmy Jia, global vice president of the outdoor and beverage segment at Bubba’s parent company, Newell Brands, said activating at the festival was part of its plan to reposition the Bubba brand as more youthful and fashion-forward. The nearly 30-year-old brand has been known for its large, insulated “kegs.” But this year, it debuted a significant rebrand and product strategy to adapt to the new era of hydration, offering new shapes, sizes and fashion-forward colorways.

“We are unapologetically going after a younger female, a baddie. And we know [festivals] are where the baddies are, so we wanted to make sure our activation was there to meet the consumer, in their moments,” Jia said.

Along with its on-site activation, the brand had put personalized bottles in the artist suites. So when headliner Zara Larsson uploaded an Instagram story that prominently featured the bottle backstage, it proved the real benefits of showing up IRL. The Bubba brand team jumped on the moment to help fuel more content; its TikTok reliving the moment has over 15,000 views compared to past posts in the four-figure range.

“You can’t plan for a small viral moment like that. But when it happens, the team really went in, leaned into it and activated to share it,” he said. “You can’t always catch lightning in a bottle, but sometimes you do get a little lucky.”

Festival activations are becoming a major way for brands to connect with customers offline. Some brands find they don’t even have to be on the festival site to make an impact: Brands like Away took over the Bay Area for Super Bowl LX this year, while this year’s Coachella drew numerous pop-ups located along the drive to the desert from brands like PacSun, Maruchan and Bloom.

For Bubba, popping up at Lollapalooza was an opportunity to present itself to a new audience. The repositioning is meant to fuel growth at Newell’s outdoor segment, which grew 4% in second-quarter sales compared to the prior year, per the latest earnings report. Newell CEO Chris Peterson credited the growth in part to innovation from its beverage brands, like Bubba and Contigo, and their marketing tactics.

“Our higher levels of brand support are increasingly being paired with more precise and engaging marketing,” he said, according to a transcript. “We are focused on building relevance around our strongest brands and innovations through programs that reach consumers in the right channels and create stronger retail activation.”

Finding the right fit for activations

Jia said catering to fashion-forward, expressive female Zillennials is a main goal for Bubba’s new direction. Previously, the brand has been positioned as a more rugged outdoor product with its stainless steel “kegs.” The new product line, however, has the kegs washed in bright colors like lime, yellow and hot pink. It’s also selling smaller, dual-function water bottles and tumblers.

Now that it’s looking to win over “Bubba baddies,” Lollapalooza was a natural fit for an activation given its roughly 400,000 attendees who lean younger and female, Jia said. “We wanted to be at the biggest events and the biggest talkable moments where that consumer can have those authentic interactions with the brand,” he said. “That’s really part of the broader picture of the Bubba rebranding, with the product line going from historical kegs that were larger in size but maybe didn’t have that expressive fashion-forward [aesthetic].”

Once the decision was made to set up an event, it takes “an army of resources” to set up activations, Jia said. The brand team has previously done pop-ups at Country Thunder and smaller events in recent years, but this was the largest event since the new brand look. “When we discovered Lollapalooza via LiveNation, we felt that this was just such a good brand fit, with over half a million attendees that skew heavily toward that young Zillennial female,” he said. “We felt we had a really big audience we could interact with there.”

Beyond its own team, Newell tapped experiential marketing firm Atypical to help strategize. Jia said the team put together “a strong brief” that guided the setup, aiming to be more than a pop-up and solve the real problem of hydration at a large outdoor event.

The Bubba Drip Bar included water bottle giveaways that could be personalized with laser etching of initials, names, phrases or emojis. It had a make-your-own charms bar that offered a reprieve in the humid summer weather. It also had a photo booth with a forced-perspective angle, letting guests take souvenir photos that leaned into Bubba’s larger-than-life ethos. Jia said the goal was to “drive talkability” and further position Bubba’s new identity as fun and fashion-forward.

“We wanted to be very much fashion and culturally aware of how these young millennials are expressing themselves,” he said.

Ultimately, the event drew at least 20,000 people. The activation also generated more than 3 million views across assets posted on Bubba’s social channels, far surpassing the brand’s norm. Views are still rolling in from paid and earned media through influencers who attended the event, with influencer partner videos racking up tens of thousands of views.

Being agile on the ground

Jia said one of the biggest takeaways from Lollapalooza was ensuring the team could be agile. “You can’t control everything when you show up,” Jia said.

In this case, the Chicago area was hit with a massive storm during Lollapalooza, which caused delays, forced evacuations and shuffled lineups. While a sunny, warm weekend may have been more favorable to marketing hydration, Jia said his team acted quickly to pivot on its messaging. One Instagram post read: “lolla forecast: 100% baddie energy.”

“We leaned right into the conversation with hashtags directly referencing the storms and the flood, but still reminding people that we’re here,” he said. “‘Come by, get a little reprieve — and you still need to stay hydrated even if it’s raining outside.'”