Rubicon Made of Different Stuff Captures a Generation of Bold Drinkers

Why the7stars Built Rubicon's Media Strategy Around Passion Points, Not Just Demographics

Emma Ramji, planner at the7stars, described the media approach as contextually led and organised around passion points including fashion, gaming and music, according to The Media Leader. This framing moves the campaign beyond a simple demographic buy and positions Rubicon as a brand that earns attention by showing up where young people already are, rather than interrupting content that has nothing to do with the brand's world.

In the United Kingdom, the soft drinks category was experiencing value growth substantially faster than volume growth in 2022, a dynamic attributed to premiumisation, on-the-go consumption and rising energy drink sales, according to Britvic's annual soft drinks review. UK soft drinks price growth ran at approximately six per cent per litre year-on-year, per data cited by 6wresearch.com, indicating that consumers were both spending more and making more considered choices — a context in which brand personality becomes a genuine commercial lever. Against this backdrop, Rubicon's decision to invest in a reach-first media plan targeting 16–34-year-olds made direct commercial sense.

AG Barr forecasted the campaign would reach seventy-eight per cent of its target audience of 16–34-year-olds, according to AG Barr's own campaign documentation. That projection places the media plan in the top tier of ambition for a brand of Rubicon's scale in the UK market. The BVOD and online video channels were selected to capture younger viewers who have migrated away from linear television, while large-format out-of-home placements extended the campaign's visual impact into urban environments where the target audience concentrates. Competitors such as Fanta, with its long-running youth marketing infrastructure, and Lucozade, which deploys sports and lifestyle partnerships extensively across the UK, represent the competitive ceiling that 'Made of Different Stuff' was designed to challenge.

IMA-HOME Brings Rubicon's Exotic Flavour Story to Life With Wit and Visual Energy

Harriet Hughes-Payne, client services director at IMA-HOME, stated that Rubicon is most definitely made of different stuff and that the agency wanted to bring this difference to life, according to Marketing Beat. That intent shaped every layer of the creative output — from the campaign's overarching strapline to the individual executions that run across BVOD, online video, social and out-of-home in the United Kingdom.

The creative approach centres on humour as a vehicle for brand differentiation. Lines such as 'Grab life by the Mangoes' demonstrate a willingness to lean into the brand's fruit-flavour heritage with irreverence rather than reverence — a tonal choice that resonates with a 16–34 audience that is highly attuned to advertising self-awareness. The campaign avoids the generic aspiration-and-sunshine visual language that has become standard in UK summer soft drink advertising, instead grounding its energy in the specific textures of Rubicon's exotic flavour range. This specificity of product reference gives the campaign an authenticity that broader lifestyle campaigns often trade away in the pursuit of mass appeal.

The media architecture of the campaign — BVOD leading, supported by online video, social video, large-format traditional and digital out-of-home, retailer point of sale, and wholesaler displays — was designed to create a consistent brand impression across the full purchase journey, from awareness through to the moment of sale, as reported by betterretailing.com and scottishgrocer.co.uk. A twelve-day Venatus digital activation formed part of the broader campaign ecosystem, according to venatus.com, extending the campaign's digital reach through specialist inventory. Production credits for the 'Made of Different Stuff' campaign beyond the named agency leads are not publicly documented in available sources.

Rubicon's 43% Pre-Campaign Growth Sets the Performance Bar for Made of Different Stuff

No verified post-campaign performance data for 'Made of Different Stuff' is publicly available beyond the reach projection and pre-campaign sales figures supplied by AG Barr. In the year preceding the campaign's launch, Rubicon grew by forty-three per cent and sold an additional fourteen million units, according to AG Barr. That baseline establishes the commercial momentum the campaign was designed to sustain and accelerate during the summer selling season in the United Kingdom.

The forecasted reach of seventy-eight per cent of 16–34-year-olds in the UK, as projected by AG Barr, represents a meaningful ambition for a campaign of this scale. Structurally, the campaign demonstrates several markers of effectiveness: a clear and differentiated brand proposition, a media plan organised around contextual relevance rather than blunt demographic targeting, a humour-led creative tone that aligns with the target audience's expectations, and distribution across channels — BVOD, online video, social, out-of-home, and point of sale — that mirrors the full consumption journey. The inclusion of retailer point of sale and wholesaler display activity, as reported by grocerytrader.co.uk and betterretailing.com, indicates that the campaign was built for commercial conversion as well as brand awareness. These structural qualities, combined with the strong pre-campaign sales trajectory, position 'Made of Different Stuff' as a credible platform for sustained brand growth in the UK non-alcoholic drinks market, even in the absence of independently verified post-campaign metrics.