Welcome to Now That’s What I Call Comms Planning! — a biweekly analysis of the brilliant thinking behind a campaign getting noticed right now.
Beefeater Gin has displayed a masterful use of comms planning to show how a bit of thinking goes a long way. The iconic British brand could have easily fallen into the trap of launching its 0.0% gin campaign with a bunch of OOH ads showing the bottle, and some generic social ‘films’ (yuck) featuring generic twenty-somethings drinking it at a bar… But instead it did something much, much better.
You’ve probably seen Beefeater’s 0.0% campaign across various industry press outlets and social accounts over the past week. Most of them have talked about how great the idea is, and how they made it happen, but nobody has really dug into why it works so well.
In a nutshell: the brand remade the music video to Jamiroquai’s 1996 hit Virtual Insanity, except now we know what he was reaching for — a 0.0% Beefeater & tonic.
If you dig into GWI and find the average age of someone who is moderating their alcohol intake, it’s 49 years old. I’m vocally against generational insight but it’s also worth noting that 41% of all people interested in low/no alcohol gin are Gen X.
Thirty years ago, when they were just 19 and hitting the clubs, this song would have been everywhere — and Jay Kay himself is now 56 and sober.
Nostalgia is a powerful tool in the arsenal of a comms planner. Understanding the world as it was when an audience hit their 20s leads to creative and entertaining work, and it helps a famously young industry avoid slipping into ageist stereotypes.
But it doesn’t have to stop at the creative idea, the choice of media can dip into nostalgia too…
Back in the 90s and 00s — Jamiroquai’s pomp — the music video was king. So instead of creating a bunch of short clips, Beefeater recreated the entire music video with a new twist, accompanying it with plenty of BTS and promotion via Jay Kay’s own social handles. It took the creative idea and stretched it. It took the idea and created something culturally additive and inherently shareable, rather than forcing it into a 15-second pre roll.
I’m usually skeptical of a creative agency pitching a two-minute long brand ‘film’, but in this instance, recreating the iconic music video is the only way this idea can be truly realised. And with 1.27 million views on Beefeater’s OWN Youtube channel, the audience clearly agrees.
I would argue that the brand could have pushed it further. Jamiroquai’s hat isn’t too far off from a Beefeater’s… Pernod Ricard (which owns the brand) could have produced a special edition bottle featuring Jay Kay in his hat to gift to fans recreating their own version of the video. I’d also have made sure he was all over the website to create a truly connected comms system that links owned, shared, paid and earned channels together.
If you’re interested in learning more about comms planning, you can download Craft Media’s guide to anti ultra-processed planning, here.
