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Brief
Bacardi Martini owned Georgian vodka, Eristoff, wanted an underground social media campaign that would target their 18-24 year old male consumer audience while increasing public awareness of its brand icon, the wolf.
As the challenger brand Eristoff specifically wanted to do something off the mainstream. The activity needed to reflect the brand's reputation for being mysterious and predatory and generate excitement by building on other global activity around wolves.
Strategy
To reach the marketing-averse target audience, 18 to 24 year old men, Us harnessed the pack mentality of twitter, Facebook and YouTube users to drive widespread interest in the digital space.
Execution
Curiosity was first sparked with announcements that the fictitious Dakov Circus was coming to London from Georgia, bringing with it a host of unusual human and animal acts including wolves. The circus was brought to life by creating a dedicated website (www.dakovcircus.com), a social media platform (www.twitter.com/DAKOVcircus), local fly posting and even its very own branded animal transporter lorry. Press coverage for the circus included Time Out and other London blogs putting Dakov in their event recommendations.
Amidst the building intrigue surrounding Dakov's curious show, twitter users became convinced that two of its wolves had escaped, sparking discussion and debate on the micro-blogging site.
A series of films were then seeded to YouTube, showing wolf sightings around North and South London. The videos went viral and, in a matter of hours, drummed up over 250,000 views driving interest that even spread as far as LA; Mark Salling, star of hit TV series Glee, tweeted to his 795,000 followers “Just saw a vid of a wolf roaming London. So interesting and mysterious... Is this real?”
Concurrently, The Daily Telegraph fortuitously ran a news story reporting that wolves had been seen as far west as Germany, and quoted scientists who called the return of the wolf to Europe 'unstoppable'.
In the week preceding the scheduled circus show the Dakov branded lorry toured across London, emitting loud and mysterious wolf noises, spurring on yet more debate about the wolf sightings. By this point the campaign had reached three million people.
Some viewers did begin to wonder whether there was a brand behind this, with a few even spotting the anagram of 'vodka' behind the Dakov name, but the full reveal was only made 24 hours before the circus was due to give its performance.
Keeping to its promise, the Dakov Circus did appear, but instead of the big top in Victoria Park it entertained its first and last audience at Hidden in Vauxhall where its circus acts performed for 500 lucky Londoners, many of whom were directed there from the brand's Facebook.
Simultaneously a 'reveal' film was posted which clocked up over 40,000 views within 24 hours.
Results
The range of social media ensured the message reached a range of different communities by engaging individuals, bloggers and brand profiles. It marked the start of Eristoff's winter season activity, which continues to target the 18-24 male consumer and will culminate in its sponsorship of the 2012 Snowbombing festival in a forest in Mayrhöfen.
Since launching in 2009 Eristoff has enjoyed the fastest growth the category has ever seen and it is now firmly established as the number two vodka in the UK.
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