The AMP Energy Rock Off! concert, the culmination of a rock band contest designed to engage consumers 18 to 25 with the beverage, will be held on Saturday evening in Toronto during the Northeast Music & Film Festival and streamed on Facebook. The winning band will receive $100,000.

PepsiCo Beverages Canada is using Facebook, which has a high concentration of Millennials, as the central platform for its current marketing campaign, and combining that with on-site engagement, reports Rob MacOdrum, marketing manager for the division.

OMD Canada is the media agency for the campaign, and the Facebook video and streaming are being powered by Eyeblaster.

Between February and April, an AMP Energy "Amp Your Game" tour visited 39 Canadian colleges and universities, promoted through ads in campus newspapers and posters. At each stop, the brand auditioned bands via a contest using the Rock Band 2 game, picked a winner and moved those semifinalists onto the AMP Energy Canada Facebook page (facebook.com/AMPenergycanada). Each performing video was posted for a week, and the bands solicited votes for the videos.

The campaign has so far resulted in more than 15,600 Facebook fans for the brand, nearly 257,000 visits to its Facebook page, more than 50,000 video views, and more than 61,000 votes.

The tour, which also included opportunities to play other video games and product sampling, generated over 151,000 AMP beverage trials and nearly 22,000 non-trial exposures to the brand's messaging.

Fans watching the Rock Off! concert live at the festival via the Facebook video stream will be able to cast votes. A panel of judges will use the Facebook votes and their own assessments of band performances, along with each band's game score, to choose the winner.

Facebook and the campus tour are delivering the 18- to-22-year-old portion of AMP's target audience, and the partnership with the Northeast Music & Film Festival, which draws more than 100,000 attendees annually, ensures reach to the beyond-college, 23 to 25 segment of the target audience, explains MacOdrum. The concert event could generate about 20,000 live attendees, and at least 2,000 are expected to view the live stream, he says.

AMP, launched in October 2007, is one of Canada's fastest-growing energy drinks. But competition in the category is intense, and the Facebook/contest/tour strategy is helping AMP break through the crowd of brands, MacOdrum says. (This was the second year for the Amp Your Game Tour, but the first year for the rock contest/Facebook stream.)

The ability to do a live stream on a social site such as Facebook enables consumers to "attend" events they might otherwise miss, in an environment in which they're comfortable, and obviously magnifies the reach of a sponsored event far beyond what has has been possible in the past, adds Ross McNab, director of digital advertising solutions at Eyeblaster.

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