For an Irish Whiskey brand, St Patrick's Day is like Christmas and New Year's combined and there is no more authentic way to celebrate the biggest of Irish Holidays than with a shot of Jameson Irish Whiskey.
We set out to make Jameson the most requested shot in neighborhood bars across the country through Long Live The Shot, a campaign celebrating togetherness, revelry and centuries of triple-distilled Jameson smoothness.
The goal for the social extension of our campaign was to drive both awareness and preference.
We turned to Facebook and Instagram to reach our core audience through two unique creative activations putting the shot at the center of the work:
First was "Shoot the Feed" a first-of-its kind 3D video campaign, serving Facebook and Instagram users a shot directly in their feeds through the platform's newly minted (at that time) auto-play video feature.
And second was "Shot's Eye View", inviting fans to share their St. Patrick's Day experiences through the lens of a shot glass filled with Jameson Irish Whiskey. This made for a collective, visual celebration of both the holiday and the local neighborhoods and neighborhood bars where celebrations take place.
Our media agency, 360i, utilized Facebook's sophisticated hyper-targeting tools to deliver locally tailored campaign messaging that would engage our audience and make it relevant neighborhood by neighborhood across the U.S.
Instagram was utilized through similar creative but with more platform friendly call-to-actions including tagging a friend or sending a friend a digital shot.
This ground-breaking campaign got what we thought was some well deserved attention from the media, including Advertising Age, Adweek and Mediapost, but the most important result was that our target consumers paid attention.
We reached 80% of the target, resulting in over 10.5 million total engagements and adding over a million engaged users to Jameson's custom audience.
On Instagram, according to the Nielsen Brand effect study, the campaign generated a significant 17 point lift in ad recall – nearly three times higher than industry norms. On Facebook, Jameson saw a 23 point lift in ad recall (96th percentile for the category) and a 5 point lift in purchase intent (98th percentile).
And we broke all prior records for the brand's social engagement and far exceeded expected benchmarks.
To which we say, Long Live The Shot!
