Bacardi campaign opts for resilience over rum

It is the time of the year when Bacardi typically promotes its recipe for holiday punch, but a new advertising campaign is promoting how the rum brand rolls with the punches, instead.

The global campaign, "Untameable," highlights the tumult that Bacardi has faced since its introduction in Cuba in 1862, like a fire in 1880, Prohibition beginning in 1920 in the United States (US), an earthquake in 1932 that destroyed facilities and the revolutionary government led by Fidel Castro that seized Bacardi's Cuban assets in 1960.

"Some men are kicked out of bars, others are kicked out of countries," reads the headline on an ad about Bacardi being exiled from Cuba. It is now based in Hamilton, Bermuda. "Earthquakes, fires, exile, prohibition," reads another ad. "Sorry fate - you picked the wrong family."

While some print ads highlight founder Don Facundo Bacardí Massó originally distilling the rum and distillers who continue the tradition today, the campaign focuses far less on its rums being smooth than on its history being rough.

In a new commercial for the brand filmed at night, actor Jordi Mollà, representing a Bacardi scion, walks uphill in the middle of a winding, cobbled street into an oncoming rowdy procession. Successive floats and performers represent historical difficulties, like men demolishing casks with sledgehammers representing Prohibition, and red-flag waving and beret-wearing actors depicting Cuban revolutionaries. "The Bacardi family didn't just survive - we thrived," says a voice-over as the actor manoeuvres through the last of the revellers and strolls confidently down the street. "Because true passion can't be tamed. Bacardi - untamable since 1862."

The commercial will be introduced online and on television in the US and Mexico first. Versions in more than 30 languages will be introduced throughout the world, beginning with Australia and India in December, and everywhere else in May, 2014.

The campaign, which also includes digital and outdoor advertising, is by BETC London, part of the Havas Creative division of Havas.

Like advertising for other alcohol brands, Bacardi ads have tended to depict situations where the liquor is cheerfully imbibed on social occasions to which only attractive people have been invited.

"The rum category has focused very much on the social aspect of a bunch of consumers enjoying the drink in a typical occasion," says Andy J Gibson, global chief marketing officer of Bacardi Global Brands, which includes Grey Goose vodka, Dewar's blended Scotch whisky and Bombay Sapphire gin.

The new Bacardi campaign aims to be more memorable by focusing on a history unique to the brand, Gibson says. The campaign is being pitched at consumers from the legal drinking age - 18 in many countries, 21 in the US - to age 29. With this age group, often called millennials, coming of age in an era of high unemployment and economic uncertainty, a message about overcoming hardship would resonate, Gibson says.

"We think for millennial consumers, they'll see this as one irrepressible spirit, i.e. Bacardi, connecting with another irrepressible sprit, i.e. they themselves," he says.

As with other liquor, consumption of rum is highest among younger drinkers. While 20 per cent of all consumers drank rum in the last six months, that jumps to 32 per cent for those 21 to 24 and to 30 per cent for those 25 to 34, according to a survey by Mintel, a market research firm.

Bacardi leads the rum category, with a 35.4 per cent share of the volume sold in the US in 2012, followed by Captain Morgan, a Diageo brand, with a 23.2 per cent volume share, according to Euromonitor International, a market research firm.

While Captain Morgan, which was introduced in 1944 by the Seagram Company, is named after Henry Morgan, a Welshman who lived in the 17th century, marketers for the brand do not suggest that Morgan originated its rum recipe, but instead use the historical figure as more of a swashbuckling mascot.

David Vinjamuri, the author of "Accidental Branding" and an adjunct professor of marketing at New York University, says the treasure-seeking adventures depicted in Captain Morgan ads represent a "sort of invented history," while Bacardi is inextricably linked to the history of rum and of Cuba. As for so little in the campaign being about drinkability, Vinjamuri notes that brands today spend less and less time trumpeting product attributes. "There's a very significant trend underway in marketing and advertising about 'content-driven brands,' and they're not selling products, they're selling content and stories," Vinjamuri says.

© 2013 The New York Times News Service