Bacardi – ‘True originals’..

Slick, sassy and effortlessly cool, ‘True Originals’ is a somewhat mysterious campaign from London based creative marketing agency ‘Think Espionage’ . The videos follow a Prada adorned ‘Euro-man’ across the world in pursuit of the world’s finest bartenders. Each one seems to be an expert in their field and able to create some seriously awesome cocktails with of course…Bacardi. Thankfully you never get to see a single bottle though, the videos are all refreshingly unbranded which instantly makes me nod in smug approval. Kudos to Bacardi for signing that off.

So what’s it all about? Well, following on from the experiential Bacardi bespoke platform they rolled out a few years ago, this campaign seems to be aiming to bring to life the experience of Bacardi - but with all the benefits of a digital platform. Whilst Bacardi Bespoke was a very cool idea, its only problem would be a lack of reach. I am sure they intended to target ‘influencers’ but anyone who is anyone should be wary of nonsense like that. This campaign seems to be largely rooted in Facebook and with no dedicated website - which is really interesting. These videos look super expensive; if there’s cash for execution, where’s the cash for the media? A great example of content-over-media and an indication that Bacardi must have faith in social.

The only gripe I have is that there’s definitely a touch of the Man from Delmonté going on about the narrator, but the quality of the production and the nicely cinematic storyline make up for it. I’m really keen to see where they go with this campaign, hopefully some bad-ass cocktail tournament a la Enter the Dragon or something.

Anyway, enjoy (responsibly), the ‘Outsider’ or the ‘Samurai’ are my favourite vids of a very cool campaign

‘The Samurai’

‘The Hummingbird’

‘The Apothecary’

‘The Outsider’