Bacardi Murmansk Route ‘08

An interactive application on Facebook developed as the social network branch of a multimedia marketing campaign.

Background

The Bacardi rum brand, established in 1862, promotes its brand internationally as a high-quality lifestyle beverage and sponsors music and video events popular with young adults. Bacardi created a campaign around the Murmansk Route, an “Amazing Race” style online reality show following a trip across Europe. Webisodes aired on Bacardi’s website were supported with a range of web media including videos and podcasts.

Friend2Friend was tasked with creating the Facebook campaign component and integrating it with the other multimedia campaign assets. Special considerations were made for Bacardi to allow advertising of alcoholic beverages on Facebook. The campaign had three phases based on the reality show’s activity—Casting, Voting, and Travel.

Objectives

1. Use social media to spread the word about the Murmansk Route reality show within a targeted Facebook population in Spain
2. Involve online consumers and their connected friends in competing or nominating others to be on the reality show, voting on the cast, and then following the show
3. Create a set of viral Facebook applications that integrate and tie into the rest of the campaign
4. Utilize existing brand assets

Results

Friend2Friend designed an interactive application with a different activity for each phase of the promotion. Casting encouraged consumers to enter the competition with their friends, voting gave them an opportunity to decide who would compete, and travel involved activities that followed the travelers. Each application incorporated video and visual assets used elsewhere as part of the Murmansk Route campaign.

Friend2Friend promoted the contest with targeted ads aimed at the desired demographic in Spain. Those ads drove users to the Friend2Friend applications on Facebook, where they could easily spread the promotion with friends. Average invites per user were much higher than typical campaigns. The total number of invitations sent was 3x the number of clicks on the banner ads, tripling the value of each click through viral marketing. Finally, Friend2Friend was successful in reaching 10% of the Spanish Facebook users with the Bacardi Murmansk Route message a combination of advertisements and application.

The Murmansk Route was engaging for users, as measured by the average 4 minutes per session spent interacting with the application on Facebook, 4 to 8 times more than through any competing media.