Background

Helping Bacardi own the On Trade by tapping into bartending culture.

We partnered with Bacardi in their grand ambition to own the On Trade - in bars where their brands come to life and make for memorable drinking experiences.

The key to winning the On Trade was having bartenders all over the UK recommend Bacardi brands in those moments, and doing this at scale

So they came to us with an idea: Freepour, a free app filled with short, snackable and instant content made for bartenders at any level, by bartenders.

The idea behind Freepour was that, in order to genuinely influence bar staff and get them to recommend our brands, Bacardi had to reach more bartenders, and do more with each one of them. This would in turn create organic, career long relationships with those that hold the real key to the On Trade.

Our Role

Giving bartenders a place they actually want to hang out.

Working closely with the Freepour team, our role was to make the app a genuinely desirable place for bartenders to spend their downtime.

To do this, we had to make highly relevant, engaging and informative content with high production value that really got under the skin of bartending culture and the mass booze category.

Previous attempts to own the On Trade saw heavily branded content with out-of-touch messages that treated bartenders like consumers. This approach was really missing a trick.

After speaking with many bartenders at different stages in their career, one thing became very clear to us. Bartenders take real pride in their careers and feel as though they’re part of an important subculture - like top chefs, or musicians. 

It was essential that our work for Bacardi reflected this insight if we were to make Freepour a place where bartenders actually wanted to hang out, and ultimately help Bacardi win the On Trade.

Bringing it to life

A suite of unmissable bartending content.

We were tasked to name, shape, write and produce a suite of content that would live on Freepour. This would become the meat of the app.

The content had to make bartenders both feel heard and enthusiastic. We had to enable them to feel like they were tapping into something that would help them advance their career and set them apart from their peers. They wouldn’t spend their downtime watching anything less. 

We created five brand new series, and counting, that covered a range of content styles and lengths to fit into any bartender's busy schedule: In The Mix, Fussy Drinker, Letter To a Young Bartender, The Shake Up and ‘20 Proof.

To create this, we leveraged our deep understanding of bartending culture and the booze category. Our guiding light was the principle that bartending is more than tending to a bar, it’s a vibrant subculture filled with proud people.

Learning from previous flawed attempts of brands influencing bartenders, we ensured that all our content was totally unbranded and framed from a bartender’s perspective. To create a space that felt relatable, human and genuine we had to keep it free of marketing.

Knowing the diversity within our audience of bartenders, we had to make sure we created a complex mix of content. From that which provided insight to bar staff with decades of experience, to that which educated and entertained budding young bartenders at the start of their career. Our content was for all levels, and all learning styles.

How we got this made

Given its production heavy nature, having in-house production was essential to the success of this project. We were able to keep an open conversation between directors, producers, creatives and strategists throughout the project to ensure quality thinking sat behind all executional decisions, and ultimately deliver high-production-quality content globally during the pandemic. 

This contained process also afforded us the opportunity to create thorough self-funded D&I and sustainability reports that we used to hold ourselves accountable and point us towards areas of our practice we can improve on.

Results

• All 5 series launched in UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
• Still awaiting results but initial read is positive.