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Absolut and Tomorrowland: ‘We are here to connect people’
The head of culture and brand partnerships at Absolut explains why connection and combatting loneliness is the key to its ongoing partnership with Tomorrowland festival.
Having already featured prominently at Coachella earlier in the year, Absolut was once again front and centre of one of the world’s biggest festivals – this time Belgian electronic dance extravaganza Tomorrowland – last month (held between the weekends of 18-21 and 26-29 July) with numerous activations both onsite and online.
The vodka brand’s partnership with Tomorrowland is now in its third year. Last year, it created a limited bottle design for the festival.
Tomorrowland has an enormous reach, welcoming 400,000 party-goers every year, but “just being there for the sake of being there is not enough”, explained Maxime Henain, Absolut’s head of culture and brand partnerships.
This year Absolut held podcast recordings with performing artists, organised a community space in the Dreamville campsite designed to help people – especially solo attendees– connect and held activities such as speed dating.
All of these activities were set up to address the subject of loneliness, which was chosen as the theme to tackle this year by the festival’s diversity and inclusion (D&I) committee, jointly created with Absolut.
Speaking to The Spirits Business onsite at Tomorrowland, Henain said: “We want to make sure that these are places to share our issues and values.
“We’re an inclusive and diverse brand, and we want to make sure that wherever we are, we can push for these things.
“But it’s not us pushing for the agenda specifically – it’s both of us. The theme this year is loneliness. There’s a lot of data right now specifically on Gen Z. After Covid, this accelerated a lot, with Gen Z feeling quite lonely. It’s a bit of a tension point.
“We are combating loneliness through a few targeted actions and really trying to bring some concrete actions. We’ve got the podcast [where artists speak on mental health]. We’ve had some speed dating. We have that for people to meet others from other places in the world, which I think is great.”
On why Absolut chose Tomorrowland specifically, Henain believes its “enormous reach” will drive change for a more inclusive future.
“There are people from all over the world here, of almost all nationalities,” he observed. “This is like a mini planet. It’s a place for Absolut because we are here to connect people.
“We’ve chosen Tomorrowland for a specific reason. There are other big festivals in Europe, right? Tomorrowland specifically has such a cultural reach. Whatever they do, the industry looks at. We know that by working with them, we’re also driving some change because we know the rest of the festival scene is looking at what they do. So we’re also fostering change somewhere else.”
Other initiatives
As for other initiatives the brand is drawing on to promote inclusivity, Henain said Absolut has been working with AI in terms of representation in fashion.
The brand collaborated with Swedish studio Copy Lab to end AI bias in fashion imagery following reports that algorithms are based on old, stereotyped data. As well as featuring in the second edition of the world’s first printed AI fashion magazine, Copy Magazine, the 10,000 image prompts can also be found on Unsplash, one of the world’s biggest royalty-free stock image websites.
Henain said: “When you prompt AI and ask for fashion pictures, it always comes as the same – white, skinny, tall, blond, blue eyes, etc – because AI replicates our stigma. That is what it thinks is beautiful.
“We’ve trained and sort of hacked AI a little bit to come back with beauty imperfections, diverse body types, skin colours, genders, gender identity and expression… a lot of different things.”
Moreover, Henain also highlighted Absolut’s work with the LGBTQ+ community.
He continued: “We have a programme called Absolut Ally, which is in a few markets, the US and the UK. We will begin soon to try to educate the trade about seeing bad behaviour. How can you help someone who’s been assaulted and all these situations that often happen, but also vice versa – training bartenders to not say the wrong things.”
Absolut has also worked with Stonewall in the UK to create a training programme that aimed to make venues safer for the queer community. The training started with All Bar One earlier this year, offering in-person sessions for all their general managers across sites.
“These are both huge issues for us,” Henain stressed.
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