With the rise of craft-spirit makers in the vodka category, compounding the struggle for consumer attention, Absolut was facing fierce competition and flat sales as consumers reached to purchase the locally-sourced, "bespoke" brands.
Little did consumers seem to know that that Absolut has a very distinct craft history of its own with every product batch farmed, distilled and bottled within a 75-mile radius of Ahus, Sweden. From seed to sip, the brand lives a very strong dedication to ensuring the quality of its product.
To stave off a decline in sales, Absolut needed to educate consumers on its craft history, and do so in an authentic way to win back over fans.
We knew that billboards and other traditional marketing weren't going to help us create the authentic voice our strategy needed. So, we introduced the Absolut Quality platform – an influencer-led, social campaign in which Absolut championed passionate creative entrepreneurs and craft makers to share its story.
In the brand's largest influencer-driven media campaign to date, we invited three influencers dedicated to using curated ingredients and products with local roots, including Spoon Fork Bacon, He Spoke Style, and Kitchy Kitchen, for an on-the-ground experience of Absolut Quality in Ahus, Sweden. We connected them with Absolut craft makers – the meticulous entrepreneurial spirits who built businesses around the locally sourced, curated ingredients – to build our quality narrative.
We continued our visual storytelling by tapping two leading Instagram influencers, Kevin Lu and Alice Gao, to partner with two additional Absolut craft makers to create compelling, sip sized content for Instagram and Facebook.
Then, using our conversation mapping tool, we found brand superfans to galvanize and turn into Absolut Quality advocates. We curated handcrafted kits themed around entertainment, food, urban living, and cocktails, and sent them to our superfans, encouraging them to share.
To help our influencer and brand ambassador's content reach ever further, we married our social media campaign with the brand's ongoing media plan – championing our influencer's content as the brand's own.
The campaign garnered more than 48 million impressions, seeing over 730,000 engagements.
Most importantly Absolut saw a 33 point increase in brand recall and the highest Facebook relevancy scores to-date, receiving a relevancy score of 7 for content, as compared to the average 2-3 score for previous content.
