As marketing executives at Bacardi Limited were brainstorming strategies to promote their newest product, Dewar’s Scratched Cask, they had two goals in mind. One was to educate consumers about the product’s unique aging, charring, and scratching process that produces a beverage more similar to bourbon than traditional whiskeys. The second was to provide that education in a way that would be engaging and would provide participants with soundbites to share with others.
“While whiskey is experiencing this resurgence if you will, it’s still largely an enigma to a lot of consumers. They drink brands, they don’t necessarily drink categories. So any way you can differentiate yourself and show the authenticity of the product and what goes into it, that will automatically create a much more premium image for consumers,” said Brain Shaifer, North American brand director of whiskeys at Bacardi USA. “What we wanted to avoid was getting too much into the chemistry and too much into the science that people really don’t walk away and remember [nothing].”
To achieve those goals, the spirits company worked with the Marketing Arm to create multisensory tasting experiences in Chicago, Louisville, Kentucky, New York, and Miami that incorporated projection mapping and virtual reality. At each event, consumers stepped inside a 10-foot replica of the oak barrels that are used to age Scratched Cask whiskey. Inside, they watched a 90-second video projected in 360 degrees around them. “Quite literally we wanted to take them inside the process to show them how the charring occurs, and how the scratching of that top layer happens, and how that intermingles with the liquid,” Shaifer said. The experience also incorporated 4-D elements. As the video showed flames charring the interior of the barrels, small heat lamps under the floor radiated warm air, and scent machines emitted aromas of vanilla and oak to correspond to flavors that develop in the whiskey.
The events also gave consumers a chance to experience what it feels like to be at the brand’s Scottish production facility through a four-minute virtual reality video. Rather than using a headset such as Oculus Rift, the brand opted to provide disposable cardboard viewers that worked with guests’ own smartphones. “We’ve seen some brands experiment with Oculus Rift. It’s a great experience, but the challenge is it’s extraordinarily expensive and hard to get to scale. What we were able to do with these headsets is give everyone the ability to experience this using their own phone, without having to download an app,” he said. The brand has produced about 50,000 of these viewers that it is using at events and providing to retailers and consumers who request them. Shaifer said the video has already been viewed more than four million times.
Guests also received samples of the whiskey, a coupon for a free Dewar’s cocktail at bars near the activations, and a coupon toward the purchase of Scratched Cask at a retail outlet. Now Shaifer said they are looking at other opportunities to use the projection mapping and virtual reality videos. “We see a whole host of opportunities moving forward and how it can really reimagine the brand education across our brands and really allow us to transport people to Scotland to get a feel for what those brands stand for,” he said.
Dewar’s promoted the four events on its social channels and in partnership with Thrillist. Total attendance at the four events was more than 2,000 people and social media impressions were 146 million.
