The Campaign

The usual way a product launch happens is that the brand uses certain media vehicles to deliver their content to the relevant audience. Except for the Absolut India launch, we tweaked this order and got the brand to make use of their audience as content drivers as well as content creators. Crowdsourcing the launch of a product through social media is still a new concept in India. Using hashtag #AbsolutRoll, we rolled out a campaign asking users to tweet their love for the bottle in order to have the bottle rolled into their city first. We pitched different Indian cities against one another and pushed it up a notch by releasing short city specific videos highlighting what makes that place special and asked users to give a shout-out if Absolut resonated with the creative style of their city. This ensured that the entire social space went abuzz with #AbsolutRoll.

Creative Execution

For the social channels, we created a series of micro videos encapsulating all elements on the bottle that demonstrated how the bottle ‘rolled’ across cities and picked up unique elements from each place, to form the final bottle design. Users ‘pulled’ the bottle towards their city by tweeting as to why the journey should begin at their hometown. With consumers at the helm, the final bottle was revealed through a compilation of micro videos, to create a master video showcasing the fact that the Absolut India design was a compilation of elements picked up from the entire country. Additionally, we had created content that highlighted the elements on the bottle and also brought alive the iconic flavor of Mango & Pepper. In the last leg of the campaign, we engaged users around the hashtag #AbsolutSpotting, during which users ‘spotted’ the bottle and shared their versions on their social channels.

The Absolut India Special Edition bottle launch successfully managed to unite popular Indian cultural references letting the product be used as a canvass by people for their creativity. This campaign lead us to achieve over 500000 relevant Brand interactions, reaching 20 Million people (unique) & garnered 500 Million Impressions, 2 million video views ; Numbers never achieved before in the history of the brand in India. Both in terms of numbers and also in terms of the quality of interactions, with thousands of people sharing pictures, videos – shouting out their love for this epic brand, it was not long before Absolut achieved their communication goal with this campaign.

Our campaign strategy stemmed from the simple philosophy: ‘If you tell them, they forget, If you show them, they might remember but if you INVOLVE them, it will be ingrained in their minds forever’. And that is exactly what we did! The objective was to make Absolut synonymous with creativity for the Indian audience and to do so, we ensured that people are kept at the center of the launch, elevating the brand proposition to newer heights. Instead of revealing the new Absolut India Limited Edition Bottle design and launching it the traditional way in various Indian cities simultaneously, we decided to let the users spearhead the product launch, the way they want. The branded content was unique in a way that it showcased the journey of the bottle, and highlighted the sights and sounds of each city it traveled to; hence making it more relatable