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Bombay Sapphire - The Perfect Mix (Digital - Craft)

Brief / Background

Bombay Sapphire – a premium gin – is associated with style and high-end design. The brand's above-the-line exposure during 2008 was low, and the brief we received was to create a highly tactical activation to expose the affluent South African to the Bombay Sapphire gin and tonic cocktail.

The solution needed to introduce the gin, encourage brand interaction, stimulate trial and develop on a small seed base of loyal customers.

The Solution

Get the folks to mix their own Bombay Sapphire gin and tonic cocktail! And reward them for their efforts.

The process introduced each ingredient in 5 stages: Ice, Bombay Sapphire, Tonic, Lime and Mint. Players could either add too much, too little ... or the just perfect quantity at each level of the challenge. After each attempt, a short video clip illustrating the result was played in delicious detail. Only candidates that mastered the precise amount of each ingredient would go through to the next level.

The crisp, clean lines of the Bombay Sapphire brand also found it's way onto the interface design, and we added smooth lounge jazz music to complete the picture. Perfect for afternoon sundowners.

The Activation

This was purely a digital exercise.

Rich media banner properties were published across the 24.com network.

We were excited about the prospect of introducing banners which interacted with each other .. but felt that the brand needed further sophistication: high quality video. The resulting execution portrayed a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gently pouring a good measure of gin from the top Leaderboard position into the lower Half Page Ad position. Not only did we achieve the banner interaction, but we also managed to clear the minimum file size hurdle with dexterous video serving!

Now that we had the viewers attention, we took the 'invitation-only' purpose of the banner further and introduced rich media expanding functionality: when prompted, the Half Page banner expanded to reveal all the mixing functionality of the Microsite ... including the background jazz. This catered specifically to an audience who did not wish to leave the current site they were on.

In order to replicate the process of mixing a cocktail within a banner we needed to capture it step by step. Each of the 5 ingredients (Ice, Bombay Sapphire, Tonic, Lime and Mint) required 3 shots each: Too Little, Too Much and Perfect. We needed 15 shots in total to make it work - and added to this complexity was that each take needed continuity, as we were building the drink incrementally. This was all shot in a studio with controlled lighting. Furthermore, we solicited the services of a voice over artist to record the "Too Little", "Too Much" or "Unrivaled" responses.

When designing the mix indicator, we researched various PS3 and Wii console games as references to inform the eventual design. Something easy to understand and engage with.

The Result

597 207 total impressions were delivered over the entire campaign period. This equated to an average brand interaction time of almost 6min on the Microsite. 75.6% of all entrants indicated they would like further communication from Bombay Sapphire – in other words we grew the original seed base by 630%. We say cheers to that!