Media Bounty fill us in on their work for Luxardo’s 2015 Cocktail Campione competition, which last year saw sales across the brand’s cherry portfolio rise 60 per cent year on year. Media Bounty discuss the project
Luxardo leverages its heritage as a distillery of distinction with the launch of the 2015 Cocktail Campione. Media Bounty Group Account Director Sarah McManus explains the thinking behind the search for one extraordinary mixologist.
2015 Cocktail Campione is part of Luxardo’s move to help grow customer demand for great cocktails by promoting the brand directly with the gatekeepers of the cocktail world. The search for rock star bartenders with the skills to create innovative cocktails using elements of Luxardo’s famous 200-year-old Italian liqueur range is open to all drinks professionals working in the UK industry.
2015 Cocktail Campione is part of a large-scale engagement campaign, encompassing video, digital and social channels, to demonstrate the versatility of the Luxardo range in cocktails, better engage with the on-trade and encourage bars to order, bartenders to use and consumers to recognise Luxardo’s products.
Working with Craig Chapman, Marketing Manager of Cellar Trends, the results of the 2014 campaign were impressive. Media Bounty’s decision to communicate to a niche trade audience across a multichannel campaign has seen a huge growth in a highly engaged community. So it made sense to step this up even more in 2015.
Luxardo has a strong family heritage so the campaign focus this year is ‘La Famiglia’. We have created more branded video content to fully support our video strategy, engaged influential bartenders to join our family and tell their story and a blogger outreach programme to add multiple dimensions to our trade engagement plan.
Bartenders entering the competition via the website stand a chance to win a place in the competition finals in Italy and a £3,000 prize.
During last year’s campaign, sales across all three products in the Luxardo cherry portfolio rose a spectacular 60 per cent year on year, with more than 1,700 new listings achieved across the on-trade in 2014. A new fully responsive website attracted more than 4,000 new users from the on-trade throughout the 2014 campaign, and the inaugural competition attracted 17,392 views.
Last year’s event inspired the creation of more than 100 original Luxardo cocktails. The 2014 title went to cocktail genius David Hamilton Boyd, Director of the Organic Spirit Company, who created Dolce Vita Sunshine, a cocktail made with cheese. David used his £3,000 cash prize to help launch his new business, the Kent Mobile Bar Company.