Let’s keep our bartenders pouring.
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Not just a campaign, a commitment to the bar community.
Without the grassroots support of bartenders, Bulleit Bourbon would still be a small boutique distillery and not a staple in bars around the world. So when lockdowns hit in 2020 and bartenders were facing one of the toughest periods in their existence, Bulleit wanted to give back to the people that gave so much to them.
So we established the Bulleit Frontier Fund – an integrated, multi-year commitment to help the bar community get back to work, and kicked it off by hiring real out of work bartenders to star in our announcement film.
On top of a $250,000 donation to the United States Bartenders’ Guild, and various other initiatives, we took over Bulleit’s social channels with #BulleitBarSkills – a content series that employed over 50 more bartenders during lockdown, to record cocktail tips and recipe videos from home.
With venues finally reopening in 2021, we knew that bars didn’t need another hand out, they needed customers. So, for our ‘year two’ campaign, we created a whole new drinking occasion and used our entire marketing and media budget to drive business back to local bars each and every week.
The campaign launched with a national TVC, over 1300 local bar events, hundreds of weekly social assets and targeted outdoor, welcoming communities back to the bar and incentivising people to ‘drink local’ every Sunday.
QR codes gave customers directions to local bars in the vicinity of each OOH placement, then reimbursed them for their first drink – with $250,000 worth of ‘first rounds’ shouted by Bulleit, helping the bar community get back on its feet one Old Fashioned at a time.
Not the campaign we were expecting to make when we won the Bulleit pitch, but what’s that expression… “When life gives you Covid, make a cocktail?”
Creative Team:
Simon Hayes, Victoria Garza, Seth Jacobs
