Most Women's Day campaigns honour women. ZYLA (Spadel Group) gave free energy drinks to men. Here is the uncomfortable data behind that decision — and what it reveals about the gap between cultural intent and measurable campaign impact.
ZYLA didn't start with a concept. They started with an uncomfortable question: who is actually exhausted at home — and why? They commissioned research through iVOX, targeting Belgian couples. Three questions. No agenda. Just reality.
What came back wasn't a mood board brief. It was a dataset that made the creative inevitable.
So ZYLA decided to help women. By giving men a free product. One free can of ZYLA for men, "so they can keep up." The insight drove the creative. The creative drove the conversation. The conversation drove measurable brand impact.
Most brands commission research to validate a direction they've already chosen. ZYLA commissioned research to find the direction. The iVOX data didn't tell them what their campaign should say. It told them what was true. That's a fundamentally different brief.
The 24% figure — men who admit they should help more but don't feel like it — is the insight that made the creative inevitable. When your brief starts with verified tension rather than a positioning choice, the ideas that emerge feel inevitable rather than manufactured.
The insight didn't become a manifesto. It became a mechanic. One free can of ZYLA for men — 100% cashback, no discount on shelf, no complicated portal. Every campaign that converts cultural insight into a participatory mechanic generates data. Every campaign that converts it into a visual generates opinions. One compounds. The other doesn't.
Three things ZYLA got right that most brands skip:
A full refund is a statement, not a promotion. It removes the hesitation entirely. The consumer has nothing to lose and ZYLA gets a verified purchaser in return. That is an even trade.
Scan or tap a QR. Buy at any supermarket. Upload the receipt in WhatsApp. Done. The friction-free flow is not a nice-to-have — it is the mechanic. Every extra step you add loses you redemptions and data.
The campaign targeted men. The cashback was for everyone. The form literally said: "geen stress, ook als je een vrouw bent of non-binair, krijg je gewoon je geld terug 😄". Inclusive by design — and it shows in the data.
Measurement isn't a post-campaign activity. It's a brief-stage decision. ZYLA ran through #ConnectedPromo because the team decided before launch that every redemption would be verified and attributed to a touchpoint.
That single decision is the difference between a campaign that ran and a campaign that proved itself. The result: 100% verified redemptions. Real-time touchpoint attribution. A first-party consumer data asset that feeds segmentation, CRM, and every future campaign. It compounds.
After 10 years running cashback promotions across FMCG, we kept seeing the same structural gaps — in category after category, market after market. Most of them are invisible until the campaign is already live.
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