July 26, 2007

By Eric Newman

NEW YORK -- Flipping the traditional ad formula, a new Bacardi spot is focusing more on the "Drink Responsibly" message than pure branding.

The spot, dubbed "Whatever Your Reason," inverts classic liquor ads that play up sex and chic with a responsibility kicker, featuring consumer ruminations of their "reasons" for drinking responsibly, with the familiar fruit bat logo only briefly appearing at the ad's tail end. The ad began its national cable network run earlier this month.

"It's a different approach from what we've done before with Bacardi," Darren Moran, group creative director at Young & Rubicam, New York, which produced the spots, told Brandweek. "We wanted to be true to the ‘Drink Responsibly' message and not use it as a way to oversell our product. We wanted to approach it from an altruistic standpoint."

And while there are other, more familiar, branded spots running concurrently, "Whatever Your Reason" isn't a simple one-off. The company plans to keep the ad in rotation for the next 12 months, increasing its frequency across a variety of cable networks during the holidays, with particular attention on New Year's Eve promotions, according to Joe Metevier, brand director for Bacardi USA.

"We hope that [consumers] appreciate Bacardi, but the main point of the spot was getting the [responsibility] message across, regardless of from whom it comes," said Metevier, when asked whether or not he felt the ads would increase brand awareness and equity for Bacardi. "It's not meant to be a brand spot, but rather it's about the message ... This is the beginning of a big initiative and continuation of our long-standing devotion to responsibility. [It represents] a good percentage of our total media weight."

While the company would not disclose its total dollars commitment to the spots, total ad spend in 2006 was $38 million, and the brand has already spent $6 million in advertising through April of this year, per Nielsen-Monitor Plus.

In addition to the TV spots, the ad also gets some digital play on the company's Web site, where viewers can add their own reasons for drinking responsibly, additions that Metevier said could eventually produce an update to the campaign which would include user-generated content, the current Holy Grail for authenticity-seeking marketers. Banner ads will also run on various Web sites.