Why Smirnoff Is Making A ‘Rallying Cry’ for an Age of Togetherness
Earlier this month, Smirnoff, the world’s number one vodka brand, announced the global launch of its vibrant new campaign, ‘We Do We’. It celebrates the power of the collective and the magic of ‘we’ that’s created when different people, ingredients, and flavours come together.
The campaign represents the biggest platform shift from Smirnoff in more than a decade and the latest expression of the brand’s storied spirit of representation and inclusivity. The campaign showcases how people from various backgrounds, cultures and identities can unite and create something amazing. Featuring real-life collectives of artists, activists and entrepreneurs who are breaking boundaries and challenging norms in their own ways, the campaign also invites people to join the Smirnoff Collective, a platform where they can connect with a global community of like-minded individuals and access exclusive content, events and experiences.
It’s a bold offering that lays the foundations for the brand’s varied global activities in the coming months and years.
LBB’s Alex Reeves caught up with Stephanie Jacoby, Smirnoff global brand director on the Little Black Book & Friends Beach during the week of Cannes Lions, to find out more.
LBB> ‘We Do We’ is a global campaign on a big scale. But it's not a huge change in direction. It's reinforcing a lot of what Smirnoff already is. So where did it begin, broadly?
Stephanie> 'We Do We' is meant to be a rallying cry to the masses. And it's really about Smirnoff championing the idea of the power of the collective 'we'. And the 'we' specifically that is created when different people, flavours and ingredients come together. As you said, we're building on a long and proud history of being a brand for everyone. We are the number-one vodka in the world, we're sold in 165 markets. We have hundreds of millions of consumers.
It's also realising that we're coming out of three years where we spent more time apart than together. I joined global Smirnoff about a year ago and as we were kicking this off, we realised there was an opportunity for a bit of a brand refresh and for the next chapter to be told. It's an acknowledgement of coming out of what has been characterised by some as a 'joy recession', where people are feeling more disconnected than ever. That power of bringing people together, that's what Smirnoff does. At our core, we're a product that creates delicious drinks that allow people to have moments of real connection.
LBB> And there's a nice rhyming there of also bringing ingredients together with Smirnoff being used in cocktails.
Stephanie> Absolutely. Our global consumer planning director, Giles Hedger, had a really nice phrase: "We're emotionalizing the product benefits of Smirnoff." The flavours, the diversity of our portfolio, we have something for everyone and every occasion and it's really nice to drive that connection between that emotional message but also that functional message of what we do so well, which is to create awesome drinks.
LBB> How did that broad idea next progress to being more specific, more strategic, speaking with your creative partners and transforming that into a campaign?
Stephanie> This is our first campaign with McCann New York. We went through a pitch process and selected them about 14 months ago. This thinking about the power of inclusivity and bringing people together – I think that early on, we saw in McCann a shared belief in that value, even in the makeup of their team. Like Shayne Millington, who's one of the two chief creative officers at McCann New York, I love the fact that she's a female creative lead. She brought so much energy and fresh thinking to what this could be. I think it really started there.
Being a global brand, we then spent a couple of months going around the world and listening to consumers talk about where they were at, how they were feeling about things. And I think just realising that there's a global human truth in that the phrase 'you do you' maybe has lost some of its shine. We've spent a lot of time focused on ourselves and what it's made us realise is that what we maybe value most is togetherness. The more we can come together, the happier we are, frankly. That Smirnoff, as a brand, can celebrate and bring people together just felt like a really exciting place for us to be.
LBB> And presumably it’s not a coincidence the time of year that it launched - June?
Stephanie> We have a proud history of sponsoring Pride events all over the world. We're super excited to see the amazing activations that are happening all over the world. We have decades of experience activating in this area.
Then we think about how that continues into festival season. Music has always been huge for Smirnoff - summer time, barbecue season has always been really big for us.
And actually, in North America that leads us into NFL season, which is a massive platform and I think one that shares our values of diversity and inclusion. We're super excited to be part of that and bring the 'we' message to sports. When you talk about sports, you're talking about your 'we' – "'we' won the game." We are at the beginning of a journey of taking this into so many different spaces to reflect the broad consumer base that we have on Smirnoff and the occasions we have all over the world.
LBB> It’s such a broad brand idea. You could almost reduce it down to just the word ‘we’ as an idea. ‘We’ is kind of all you need.
Stephanie> Yes! We talk about 'we-isms'. The word 'we' is understood all over the world. Words like 'together' are harder to translate, harder to understand. But the word 'we' is so instantaneous and recognisable and has such a clear emotional resonance for people. We talk about our collective 'we' internally and the campaign has confirmed not just how the brand shows up externally, but also how we talk about ourselves and celebrate the collective internally at Diageo.
LBB> It’s obviously such a huge integrated campaign. And it's global, with many variations possible. What are some of the interesting ways that this big idea expresses itself at a local level?
Stephanie> I love that question because we often talk on Smirnoff about how we have a global idea, a global connectivity around this big human truth; but actually, the magic of the campaign comes to life at a local level when we activate it in culture and we give it meaning. What does the collective mean? What does bringing that collective together mean in different parts of the world? And that conversation around inclusivity and representation does take on different shapes in different parts of the world. What I love the most, is as we're talking to our markets around how they're going to be launching, what are they going to be doing on the ground to bring that to life. You just get some of the most amazing and inspiring ideas.
One that comes to mind is we were recently talking to our market in Nigeria. Nigeria is driving a huge influence on culture in terms of Afrobeats, the way that music is travelling from Nigeria all over the world. One of the things that they've recognised is that the collective in music is quite heavily male dominated. So they have a platform called 'Produce Her', which is all about creating space for more women and championing women through a partnership with Spotify. I just love the authenticity of it, the local resonance of it. It's a space that's so true for Smirnoff and is so connected to the occasions where people enjoy Smirnoff, that it just feels like an exciting place for us to be moving the needle on culture.
LBB> Let’s talk about the film at the centre of the campaign, showcasing so many different kinds of people together. How was that idea guided through in terms of working out who you're going to feature. How to create a film that unites all those people?
Stephanie> Given our huge drinker base, we felt that it was really important that we recognise the breadth of consumers that enjoy Smirnoff all over the world. We've thought about inclusivity and representation in every stage of the work. From the team that worked on this at McCann, my team, who is actually from five of the seven continents of the world, to the directors that we chose. We worked with ManvsMachine – a creative collective that really believes that there's not one single person, it is a group of people from all diverse backgrounds. They shared our belief in the importance of how diversity leads to greater creativity on camera.
We call our target consumer 'vibe shifters'. To us that vibe shifter is an ageless mindset. We all have vibe shifters in our lives, like the friends who create the playlist, they find the new place that everybody needs to go, they bust out the board game at the funniest time. They shift the vibe. So as we recruited for our film, it was about finding those vibe shifters to represent, age, ethnicity, body shape, gender, in a way that encapsulated the collective Smirnoff wants to celebrate and the belief that everyone needs to be welcome.
LBB> We're obviously right at the beginning of this campaign. What should we watch for next?
Stephanie> As I mentioned, some really exciting work is going to be launching with the NFL in the US, which will be a massive platform for us. I'm really excited to see that come to life. And from there, I think we have a couple more things in the mix.
We are approaching a very exciting production of the next chapter of 'We Do We' and I'll give you a snapshot into it: it's built around the analogy that life is a cocktail. I think there's this recognition of this idea that we talk about a lot at Smirnoff, which is one plus one equals three. It's this idea that bringing different people or different ingredients together, is greater than the sum of its parts because of the magic that happens. When you've had a great cocktail, it's not just about the three or four ingredients in the cocktail, it's the magic that they create together. And I think celebrating that idea of when you can bring your unique ‘me’ to your 'we', it makes it that much greater and ultimately makes the world a better place for us all.
