Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Madonna Is "Smirnoff"'s BFF Or How To Win The "Material Girl"!




Just how big is "Smirnoff"?

The top-selling vodka brand in the U.S. can call no less than Madonna a BFF.

On Nov. 12th, 2012, the pop goddess will host a dance-off at the brand’s "Nightlife Exchange Party", the winner of which will get a chance to be in the singer’s next tour.

With $232 million in sales each year, the company controls 21 percent of the U.S. vodka market, so it’s not as if "Smirnoff" needs to go crazy to stay on top.

Yet, that fact didn’t stop marketing duo Simon Burch and Michelle Klein, of "Smirnoff"’s parent company "Diageo", from launching one of the most innovative campaigns that the liquor industry has seen in years:

"We had a brand idea called 'Be There', which is a philosophy about getting out and having amazing nights", says Klein.

"We’d been working on it for about a year, and we wanted to take it from being a philosophy into a manifestation that people could actually touch and experience."

So Klein and Burch challenged "Smirnoff"’s team of creative, digital, and social agencies, led by "JWT" (which was also behind the brand’s popular "Fridgetender" campaign), to bring "Be There" to life.

"We tore up the rules of how we would go through the normal process of coming up with brand ideas", says Klein.

The result was the aforementioned "Nightlife Exchange Project", a sprawling social media campaign that encouraged people all over the world to swap nightlife experiences on Facebook and vote on their favorites, which were then revealed during a night of parties in major cities.

This year, Klein and Burch expanded the project from 12 to 50 cities worldwide (and recruited Madonna, of course).

And the efforts of Klein and Burch have paid off in making "Smirnoff" more than a very famous friend: the "Nightlife Exchange Project" also helped quadruple "Smirnoff"’s number of Facebook fans.

We’ll toast to that.


source: adweek

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