SOLO women help celebrate 50 years of an Aussie icon in newly launched campaign via TBWA
Iconic Solo soft drink is celebrating its 50th birthday by creating its first campaign via TBWA, featuring “Solo Women” joining in the adventure sports which made the brand famous through the 70s and 80s.
Generations of moustache and mullet-wearing Solo men have helped the drink become one of Australia’s most recognisable brands through heroic displays of effort. Kayaking off waterfalls, arm wrestling, fishing for a shark or even wrestling a crocodile all required a Solo to quench their hard-earned thirst.
Now women are joining in the signature “slamming it down fast” ads for the milestone birthday year, with new ads featuring world junior wakeboarding champion Chloe Mills and expert kayaker Dita Pahl who competes in the Australian wildwater team.
Lauren Fildes, general Manager marketing for Asahi Lifestyle Beverages said the ads were a nod to the nostalgia of the famous ads: “The iconic Solo Man still exists, but this showcases that all Australians’ thirst worthy efforts are deserving of a Solo!”
Solo was launched in 1973 and its ads have featured four main actors, including the original Michael Ace in the ‘70s and ‘80s, comedian Joel Creasey’s father Terry and, more recently, Wollongong’s Adam Demos who is currently starring in the Hollywood hit show “Sex/Life”.
Today, almost 60 million litres of Solo, including no-sugar Solo Zero, are consumed by Australians each year. The iconic lemon tang brand remains in over 1.7 million Australian households.
The Solo range now features an original, Zero Sugar, and a lemon-lime Solo in Zero Sugar. There was even a limited-edition range of Solo Deodorant.
The new ads, featuring the slogan “crushing thirst since 1973”, will run nationally, and bring back the catchy Solo jingle.
18 Comments
This is the work you get when the target audience is everyone.
great naming conventions on the burn in and timecode!
Seriously? It’s 2023 and Solo has just realised there are women in the world?
Show us the other 22
Can’t quite cut it when it comes to genuine client work
They were too busy inventing new clients to work with to notice
As a toppling thought – modernise the brand by transforming from ‘Solo Man’ to a ‘Solo Woman’ it’s great.
Then the ad is just terrible. This got trashed by the client during the process, badly.
high five solo for including women, worth PRing this for sure!!!!
or is the only interesting thing about this the fact that Joel Creasey’s dad was a Solo man?
Everything else about this is just a bit dull and pointless. Certainly nothing that adds to the brand’s allegedly “iconic” status.
Best piece of work out of TBWA in a while!
Best piece of real work, you mean.
shots of women doing stuff whilst lyrics are still “solo man”.
I can’t understand why this is being PRed as female-focussed, in such a self congratulatory way. There are two women ‘featured’ (if you can call it that) in total – professional sportswomen no less. I’m so confused by this press release and what it’s trying to do and say.
Blink and you’d miss the women clumsily edited into this amateurish effort. But here’s a scoop; I have an anecdote for you. When Old CD Guy was a junior in the late 70s at a then powerhouse Melbourne agency called Masius who had the Cadbury Schweppes account, the story was that the agency invented the Solo brand, the packaging, the advertising etc and then told Cadbury Schweppes to make the lemon drink to match the marketing!
No doubt this is a client release. Giveaway is no creds.
100% correct
Did you set up the first comment so you could answer it yourself?
No wonder no one has put their name on this. Who even drinks this yellow fizz anyway? In a market so adept to health and optimisation of physical and mental ability , to think there is a company selling a can with over 30 grams of refined yellow sugar just cracks me up. Then to lean on a jingle from the 80’s is just horrendous. Here’s the thing SOLO- we dont care about your diabetes inducing fizz. Amd we sure as hell don’t drink it to refresh ourselves.