Captain Morgan challenges Bacardi in new ad

Diageo has seemingly taken aim at Bacardi’s dominance in the white rum market with a new £1 million UK advertising campaign for its Captain Morgan White Rum.

Diageo has seeming taken aim at Bacardi in a new UK ad campaign for its Captain Morgan White Rum

Running with the tagline “White Rum Has A New Captain”, the campaign has launched on Facebook and television.

Designed to “drive mass awareness” of Captain Morgan White Rum, which launch in the UK earlier this year and debuted in the US in February 2014, the campaign is multi-channel and multi-media.

In a brand first, the campaign will also see Captain Morgan partner with BuzzFeed to provide content to an estimated 18m consumers per month.

“Our launch campaign will drive excitement and mass awareness for our new variant, Captain Morgan White Rum,” said Claire McQuattie, head of Captain Morgan marketing for Western Europe.

“We will drive Captain Morgan White Rum to create new news in the largest segment of rum, and we will re-ignite and add excitement to the category.

“The new white variant is a perfect complement to our existing offerings – Captain Morgan Original Rum and Captain Morgan Original Spiced Gold. Our communications will look to target the rum consumer in a variety of ways over the coming weeks.”

Bacardi was recently overtaken as the world’s largest rum brand by India’s McDowell’s No.1 Celebration, and this new campaign is a sign Captain Morgan intends to challenge the brand’s dominance in the international white rum market.

According to The Spirits Business’ Brand Champions data, in 2014 Bacardi saw its volumes decline 5% to 18.2m cases, while Captain Morgan grew a modest 1% to 10.4m cases.