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Top spirits marketing campaigns in July

Last month Skyy Vodka celebrated the “spirit of today’s bold, optimistic Americans”, Malibu ramped up its ‘smart’ bottle initiative, and Diageo unveiled a short film on Johnnie Walker’s heritage.

Last month in marketing: Malibu offered a “direct, digital touchpoint for consumers”

Brands ramped up their summer activity in July – Islay Scotch Bunnahabhain celebrated the isolated location of its distillery, while Maker’s Mark highlighted the brand’s handcrafted credentials with its first integrated campaign in the UK.

Meanwhile, in vodka, Skyy kicked off its Proudly American campaign featuring Olympic skier Gus Kenworthy, and Trixie Mattel and Dusty Ray Bottoms from RuPaul’s Drag Race, and Poliakov launched a new virtual reality experience.

Click through to the following pages to discover our pick of the top 10 spirits marketing campaigns launched in July 2018. 

Poliakov

French vodka brand Poliakov is launching a virtual reality experience at music festivals across Europe.

‘Ice Wall’ is a two-­minute-long virtual reality activation that allows consumers to “live an extreme experience and interact with the brand”. It uses a ‘hyper-sense’ stimulator and Oculus virtual reality headsets, and aims to show that the brand is “both connected and innovative”.

Ice Wall has been rolled out to Viña Rock and Marenostrum in Spain, and Rock Zottegem in Belgium. Constance Descamps, brand manager, said the virtual reality experience was an “incredible opportunity” for Poliakov’s target audience to “re­experience our brand universe in a new, original way”.

Bacardi

Bacardi has teamed up with environmental charity Lonely Whale to clamp down on single-­use plastic and eradicate one billion plastic straws by 2020.

The latest collaboration from the drinks group, called The Future Doesn’t Suck, will also see Bacardi remove “non-essential”, non-­recyclable single-­use plastic across its global supply chain.

The campaign will launch in London and will feature partnerships and events. Bacardi also launched a new training programme at its global headquarters in Bermuda, designed to educate distribution partners and on­-trade venues about plastic straw alternatives.

Label 5

Blended Scotch whisky brand Label 5 has recruited five street artists from around the world to create a series of graffiti artworks for its Power of 5 campaign.

The La Martiniquaise-owned brand partnered with UK artist David Shillinglaw, who designed a colourful mural in London’s Brick Lane.

In Mexico City, artists N30, Mocre and Mil Amores worked to produce an installation depicting the solidarity that followed the earthquake that hit Mexico in 2017. The blended whisky brand also worked with Szabotage in Hong Kong, Rami Mouallem in Beirut and Arnaud Kool in Brussels.

Distilled

Carlsberg UK’s specialist spirits division, Distilled, has created a series of educational videos with the Thinking Drinkers.

Distilled, which was founded by Carlsberg’s wine and spirits branch, Crown Cellars, this year, has partnered with the comedy­-and-­drinks­-writing duo to create a series of videos that will be released over five months.

The “innovative and snappy” online tutorials will cover five core spirit areas – vodka, gin, rum, Scotch whisky and American whiskey.

Katie Hewitt, spirits category manager at Distilled, said: “Our partnership with the Thinking Drinkers has helped us develop a different way of communicating information on the spirits category.”

Malibu

Pernod Ricard has created an additional 300,000 Malibu ‘smart bottles’, which will launch in Europe as part of the brand’s Because Summer campaign.

The bottles are enabled with near­-field communication (NFC) technology that offers a “direct, digital touchpoint for consumers”.

Malibu’s NFC­-enabled bottles were unveiled in August 2016, but now the brand will undertake a “huge scale-­up operation”, releasing 200,000 bottles in the UK and 100,000 in Germany.

The new technology ‘connects’ consumers to the Malibu Games and gives them the opportunity to win prizes. The UK bottle will also feature drinks recipes and seasonal content.

Maker’s Mark

Maker’s Mark has launched its first integrated marketing campaign in the UK for nearly a decade, highlighting the brand’s hand­crafted credentials.

The campaign features a series of out­-of-­home visuals, covering locations including Oxford Circus, London Bridge and Leicester Square underground stations, plus “platform domination” at railway stations such as King’s Cross.

Featuring the tagline ‘Hand­-dipped. One at a time. Every time’, the campaign will be supported by specialist print advertising, in-bar support and social media.

It will also be accompanied by an on-­trade programme, called The Makers, which will offer a series of workshops for bartenders.

Skyy Vodka

Gruppo Campari has launched a US marketing campaign for Skyy Vodka that celebrates the “spirit of today’s bold, optimistic Americans”.

The campaign, called Proudly American, explores the “values on which America was founded”.

The initiative kicks off with the Home of the Brave ad, featuring Olympic skier Gus Kenworthy, and Trixie Mattel and Dusty Ray Bottoms from RuPaul’s Drag Race.

The advert features Kenworthy talking about the first globally televised gay kiss, and Mattel performing on stage as a country singer.

The integrated campaign will launch in phases throughout the rest of the year, and will feature out­-of-­home, digital, PR and event activations.

Johnnie Walker

Diageo has launched a short film about the production and heritage of blended Scotch brand Johnnie Walker.

The film, titled Scotch: from Scotland to the World, is a “behind-­the-­scenes look” at the leading Scotch brand, and features Emma Walker, a member of Diageo’s whisky specialist team, and Alan McGee, who works on the distillation of Caol Ila.

Dominic Redfearn, global brand and communications director for Diageo, said: “In producing this film, we want viewers to hear from the heroes of our business.”

Bunnahabhain

Islay Scotch whisky distillery Bunnahabhain has launched its latest marketing drive, which aims to celebrate the rugged isolation of the distillery.

The Sound of Islay campaign hopes to bring to life Bunnahabhain’s location, production and pronunciation in a playful manner.

A play on both the distillery’s location on the narrow strait of sea between Islay and Jura, as well as the brand’s Gaelic naming convention, the campaign uses phonetic spellings to portray ‘The Sound of Islay’.

Derek Scott, brand director for malt whisky, said: “The Sound of Islay campaign aims to take people on a journey to discover the unique pace of life at Bunnahabhain.”

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