Background & brief

Pernod Ricard were launching a new product, Beefeater Pink — a unique strawberry-flavoured gin that’s a fun, youthful take on the classic Beefeater London Dry Gin.

Our challenge? To launch it in the fiercely competitive London market, with a campaign that would cut through and make a lasting impact, on a small budget.

With pink gin being the fastest-growing category in an already booming gin market, to get Beefeater Pink noticed we had to do something bold enough to catch consumers’ attention – and unique enough to stick in their memory.  And we had to do this for a brand that had, for the last 15 years, struggled to capture the hearts and minds of gin drinkers.

Creative Concept

The summer of 2018 was set to be a scorcher. Londoners were hot, sweaty, and thirsty.  

And in no place were people hotter, sweatier and more desperate for a drink, than on the London Underground.

Reaching an average temperature of 30ºc over the summer months, London’s tube lines were full of thirsty commuters – all seeking refreshment from their stagnant surroundings, and refuge from the packed carriages.

So, to position Beefeater Pink as the hottest serve of the summer, we launched it to the market in the hottest location in town – literally – and refreshed the people of London with some Pink drinkspiration when they needed it most.

Data mapping identified Oxford Circus as the location with the highest footfall of our target audience – and, even better, it was in close proximity to the bustling bars of Soho, giving us the opportunity to reach consumers just before they made their purchase decisions.

We hit consumers with an onslaught of Pink that they couldn’t ignore, with a complete station takeover. Vibrant pink visuals broke through the grey of the underground, and refreshing cocktails tempted hot commuters as they made their way up and out of the sweaty station.

But we wanted to take it further than just a poster campaign – that had been done before. We wanted to expand our audiences’ connection to the brand by creating an experience that was unique, unexpected and truly memorable.    

So we capitalised on the confined space of the underground to take our campaign to the next level. In partnership with Havas and Exterion Media, we turned a visually-striking poster campaign into an immersive brand experience by tapping into a second sense. A sense strongly linked to memory, and the next best thing to taste... smell.

Utilising an innovative printing technique that infused posters with scented ink, we filled Oxford Circus station with the smell of wild strawberries, creating TFL’s FIRST-EVER scented underground station campaign. So consumers not only saw our pink gin – they could smell it, too.

The campaign took consumers on a sensory journey through the station, via four strawberry-scented exit corridors and a vinyl wrapped escalator with LEPs (escalator panels) – triggering their taste buds, and putting Beefeater Pink front-of-mind just before they hit the bars of Soho.

By painting the underground pink, and filling it with the scent of wild strawberries, our OOH station takeover helped support Beefeater Pink’s overall communications strategy of ‘being seen as a fashionable London gin by boldly owning the millennial pink colour, and creating desire by embodying its fun strawberry flavour’.

Results

Our pink posters delivered the sweet smell of success, achieving a +6% increase in awareness and +7% increase in consideration over the two-week campaign — that’s over 3x the campaign target.

Beefeater Pink experienced +102% sales growth over the campaign vs. targets, and is currently outselling Beefeater London Dry 4 to 1,  making it the most successful innovation launch for Pernod Ricard UK in more than five years.

The sweet smell of success, indeed.