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Slideshow
Top drinks marketing campaigns and news: April
Budweiser revives “WHASSUP” ad for lockdown era
(Photo: Budweiser)
Beer brand Budweiser has revived its famous “whassup” advert to reflect the coronavirus lockdown situation across the world.
The original “whassup” advert ran from 1999 to 2002, and first aired on 20 December 1999. The ad campaign, which saw four friends phoning each other while drinking a beer, was run worldwide, and was arguably one of the first adverts ever to go viral. In the commercial, the friends all shout “whassup” down the phone to each other.
The phrase quickly became a pop culture catchphrase. It has been sent up numerous times throughout the years, with nods to the commercial appearing on TV show
The Simpsons, horror parody film Scary Movie, and more recently by TV presenter James Corden on the Late Late Show.
Budweiser created two new versions of the iconic advert on 27 April. In the first, the original video from 1999 has been re-imagined and dubbed to give the impression that the characters are chilling “in lockdown, with a Bud”.
In another version, The AB InBev-owned lager brand has recruited former NBA superstar Dwyane Wade and his wife, actress Gabrielle Union, to star in the new advert, as well as some of their friends, including Chris Bosh, Candace Parker, and DJ D-Nice during one of his ‘Club Quarantine’ dance parties.
Concha y Toro launches major TV advertising campaign in UK
Concha y Toro UK has launched a television advertising campaign across ITV, Channel 4, All 4 and Sky, focusing on its Argentine wine brand Trivento.
According to data cited by the wine group and sourced from Nielsen, value sales of Trivento grew 53% in the 52 weeks ending 21 March 2020.
The advertising campaign, which will feature a 20-second advert shown across major terrestrial and satellite television channels, is the next phase of the company’s ‘bold discoveries’ marketing campaign.
The ad will be hitting screens today (27 April) and will be shown until 24 May 2020 during prime time shows including Gordon, Gino and Fred’s Road Trip, Bake Off – The Professionals, and Vera.
The campaign will support the earlier unveiling of a new series of 8 x 10-second Trivento idents as part of a partnership with the Discovery Channel, which is now in its third year. The idents will run across the Discovery channels, which include Discovery, Quest, DMAX, and dplay, from April until 31 December 2020.
Australian Vintage backs The Three Drinkers’ podcast debut
The Three Drinkers have launched their first podcast series, called Bring A Bottle, sponsored by Australia’s McGuigan Wines. Ideal for lockdown listening, the podcast is available to stream on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
With the same candid humour as their award-winning TV series on Amazon Prime, listeners will get behind-the-scenes access to the whimsical world of Aidy, Helena and Colin within each bitesize 20-minute episode.
The podcast will explore everything from frost-bitten toe cocktails and crumpet beer to a ‘guess the grape’ based on the sound challenge and a ‘spit or swallow’ segment. It will also delve into the trio’s drinking secrets, what grinds their gears, and the quirky characters they have encountered on their wine and whisky adventures around the world. The first series includes five episodes that began airing weekly on 8 April. In each episode, McGuigan Wines will be giving one listener a three-month supply of wine to enjoy during lockdown.
Among the newest wines in the McGuigan portfolio is a Shiraz and Tempranillo blend within its Engineer range, which, at £10, sits above the Black and Reserve labels in a price point that the producer says is in “strong growth”.
The wine marries dark berry flavours from the Shiraz with the earthiness of Tempranillo. Julian Dyer, chief operating officer for McGuigan Wines UK, called the Shiraz/Tempranillo blend “the first of its kind for McGuigan in the UK”.
Busch offers free beer to betrothed couples
AB InBev-owned brand Busch is offering betrothed couples free boxes of beer if they’ve had to postpone their weddings during the current lockdown this spring.
Busch launched a competition on its social media platforms in April, asking people to share how they plan to celebrate their nuptials once the lockdown rules are lifted. The competition ran until 1 May, and the winners will receive free Busch beer for a year.
The brand said: “Your wedding plans may be on ice for the time being, but we wanna give you a wedding gift of ice-cold Busch.”
“Tell us how you’re planning to celebrate, along with #BuschWeddingGift and #Sweepstakes for your chance to win.”
So far, the tweet has received over 2,000 comments from engaged couples sharing photos and their plans. While some have decided to push their weddings back to later in the year, others still found time to celebrate their planned wedding days at home during the lockdown.
Busch said that 250 competition winners will be selected and handed a US$300 (£241) loyalty card, which will allow them to buy a 24-pack case of beer every month for a year. “Whether couples ran to city hall to say ‘I do’ or are postponing until another time when they can gather friends and family, this small consolation will allow them to focus on what really matters – each other – and cheers all year long,” the company said in a news release.
Tenute Piccini lands major TV campaign
Tuscan wine group Tenute Piccini has launched a TV campaign with Italy’s largest media group to reassure the industry during the Covid-19 crisis.
The campaign, which launched on Easter Sunday, includes a 32-second advert, and will run on all Mediaset television and digital channels.
Featuring images of empty cities interspersed with shots of Tuscan vines, the advert carries the message that “all will be fine” and the “courageous Italian heart” will triumph over the current corinavirus crisis.
Based in Castellina in Chianti, the Tuscan producer has already donated 30,000 masks to authorities in Tuscany, Lombardy and Liguria, and has partnered with e-commerce channel Tannico to donate €1 from the sale of every bottle from its Torre Mora estate in Sicily to the Sacco Hospital in Milan, in northen Italy.
CEO Mario Piccini is continuing to invest in the company’s vineyards and staff, maintaining full production and avoiding redundancies.
Piccini said: “We have kept all the production sites active, respecting the rules of the Decree of the President of the Council of Ministers (DPCM) in order to continue to guarantee the communication of our products.
“We consider ourselves extremely fortunate to have been able to maintain high levels of employment without activating tools such as the redundancy fund.”
Ramón Bilbao takes Spanish Wine Academy launch online
Rioja winery Ramón Bilbao is sticking to its Spanish Wine Academy global launch plan, bringing digital initiatives forward in light of disruption to its global events calendar.
The programme, designed to showcase the quality and diversity of Spanish wines, was due to launch in the UK in March, with events in Spain and Russia over the next two months.
Instead, the Spanish winery has brought its digital platform forward and is now live with online ‘wine meets’ around the world.
A Spanish Wine Academy YouTube channel will also be unveiled as planned in June.
“The Spanish Wine Academy is devoted to helping trade and consumers discover the distinctive, excellent styles from the different DOs of Spain,” said Carmen Giné, marketing director at Ramón Bilbao.
“We launched the initiative in 2018 in Moscow, taking sommeliers on a tour of Spain’s key regions and on a detailed journey into the viticultural and vinification techniques behind some of our country’s top wines.”
Giné said the team “has to acknowledge the difficulty and uncertainty of these times, but we can also still celebrate Spanish wines”.
Ramón Bilbao brand ambassadors have already started online tastings and webinars, and the programme of live events will scale up over the next few months.
Jameson pledges to support bartenders
Irish whiskey label Jameson has launched an online platform to support the international bar community during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Jameson’s trade engagement platform, Jameson Hosts, has unveiled the online initiative which allows members of the bar community to connect, learn and share their experiences during the global health crisis.
The online platform will offer bartenders the chance to receive wellbeing support, as well as improve their technical knowledge and collaborate with other members of the sector.
It follows news that the whiskey label had pledged to donate US$500,000 (£401,497) to the United States Bartenders’ Guild to support members of the on-trade affected by coronavirus. Jameson Hosts will also be offering “financial compensation” to those creating videos for its platform. These videos will include anything from cocktail masterclasses and wellbeing sessions to career coaching and whiskey tutorials.
The platform is shortly to announce details of a three-day festival at its Midleton Distillery, which will take place in late 2020 or early 2021.
Brendan Buckley, international marketing director at Irish Distillers, said: “We hope this will offer both practical and emotional support to the bartending community through this challenging time and we very much look forward to celebrating with all our hosts at Midleton soon.”
i heart Wines launches coronavirus superhero campaign
i heart Wines has teamed up with personalised gifting specialist Intervino to make their limited edition packaging as part of its superhero campaign.
The initiative launched on Monday 6 April on i heart’s Facebook and Instagram channels, and daily winners were chosen at random over two weeks.
Customers were asked to nominate their chosen superhero, whether it be their local postal worker, shopkeeper, NHS staff member, binman/woman, carer, farmer, delivery driver or parent. The scheme is open to anyone deemed worthy of some recognition for their work during the Covid-19 crisis.
Bordeaux producer offers virtual museum and art gallery tours
Known for its stylish wine bottles and connection to the Russian art foundation, Château La Grace Dieu des Prieurs has set up space on its website offering access to ballet performances, operas, theatres, museums and galleries.
Bordeaux’s Château La Grace Dieu des Prieurs has partnered with Bloomberg Media on the initiative, which provides virtual tours of Moscow and St. Petersburg’s galleries and museums, as well as links to projects of “world-famous Russian theatres, dance companies and orchestras.”
Château La Grace Dieu Des Prieurs signed a deal with the Art Russe Foundation, which owns one of the largest collections of Russian art of the late 19th and 20th centuries, in May 2017. As part of this, the estate can use reproductions of 12 different works by Russian painters from the Art Russe collection per year, to design its Grand Cru wine labels.
The estate, owned by Russian entrepreneur Andrey Filatov, has created new culture page that provides information on the Tretyakov Gallery, the Russian Museum, the State Hermitage Museum, the Peterhof Palace, the Pushkin Museum and the Garage Museum for Contemporary Art, which have all opened their doors to virtual visitors.
It also includes links to performances at the Bolshoi and Mariinsky theatres, and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra.
Brixton Brewery raises food bank funds with yeast for home bakers
London’s Brixton Brewery is raising money for its local food bank by selling brewing yeast to home bakers along with a bread recipe.
As the UK grapples with a shortage of baking supplies, Brixton Brewery is supplying bread makers with yeast.
The brewery is selling 30g sachets of yeast, which can make between six to eight loaves depending on their size, along with a bread recipe.
Xochitl Benjamin, co-founder of Brixton Brewery, commented: “When I heard about the yeast shortage in the news I knew we had to do something to help! I got caught out myself, trying to buy some from the shops in late March and there already wasn’t any.
“Then I realised that I have access to a brewery full of yeast and I probably didn’t need to worry! We hope that by making our yeast available to buy, we can help more people indulge in the joys of home breadmaking and raise funds for our local food bank while we’re at it.”
While not the same as the dried yeast sold in supermarkets, the brewery said it works well in most bread recipes.
All profits from the £5 parcels will be donated to the Norwood and Brixton Food Bank. The brewery is also giving £5 from all t-shirt sales to the food bank.
Ukranian vodka company gives bartenders ‘tips’ for Instagram cocktails
Ukraine’s largest vodka manufacturer has launched an online cocktail competition and is offering applicants “tips” for each entry.
Nemiroff, Ukraine’s state-owned alcohol producer, has launched a digital bartending competition that will see anyone who enters get paid.
The company told the drinks business that it has halted all scheduled marketing campaigns to cut costs while many large companies face an “uncertain furture” thanks to lockdown measures.
Instead, the vodka maker launched the Nemiroff Cocktail Challenge in April this year, which it describes as a “win-win” situation for bartenders.
Every bartender, who uploads a video of a cocktail that uses Nemiroff vodka to their personal social media profiles and fills in the application will receive a guarantee cash reward – or “tips” – from the company. The most “creative and outstanding” works are chosen by a panel of judges, and the winners are announced via an Instagram post at the end of the week which includes the successful bartenders’ respective social accounts. They are then rewarded separately with larger sums, according to the group.
The competition is intended to help out bartenders “who have been together with brand all this time, but are temporarily unemployed during the quarantine period,” Sofiya Makaruk, Nemiroff’s global PR manager, told the drinks business.
Nemiroff has a budget of just shy of 1 million UAH (£29,679) to spend on the competition.
The competition will run in four “seasons” that last a week. Each season dedicated to a different theme, and at the end of the week, Nemiroff names five winners who created the most impressive drinks.
So far around 400 bartenders from across Ukraine have entered, and will receive financial support from Nemiroff.