Kim Kardashian

Kim Kardashian launched her new caffeine-free brand called UPDATE and I think this is one of the smartest marketing ploys I've seen all year. The ad is built entirely around Kim Kardashian herself. She's displayed in a museum in a glass case, working through a pile of tasks while gallery visitors just watch her. And one of the most recognizable attorneys in America asked if she ever passed the bar. It's self-aware, it's funny, and it lands nothing like a traditional energy drink ad. Every energy drink focuses on extreme performance. Red Bull sells wings. Monster sells adrenaline. Celsius sells an athletic edge. And Kim went in a completely different direction. UPDATE is being positioned as calm and functional and "The energy and focus you get is unbelievable. I am hooked." - Ramon. Something like professional energy, designed for the woman who's already doing too much and needs something that works with her, not against her. And the category positioning is exact. They're rolling out to over 4,000 Walmart stores on day one. And that level of mass market distribution, alongside celebrity endorsement, is engineered to move the product off the shelf on the first drop. Now the humour part is what's so genius. Every previous celebrity launch has focused a lot on aspiration. Kim landed with a joke about her most public failure, which is exactly why the campaign feels like you're talking to a person rather than buying a product. The final layer is of course her own audience. Everyone of her millions of followers now learns that there's a caffeine-free alternative to energy drinks. Other brands would spend so much just to get a percentage of that reach. And Kim delivered in one single Instagram post. The deepest strategic move is timing. UPDATE launches exactly when the wellness community has turned against caffeine. The audience Kim reaches is already looking for the exact product she just marketed. So essentially, she didn't create the demand, but knew that for this product, it was already there. It'll be interesting to see what category she goes into next, because Kim always arrives before the trend picks up.