We set ourselves the mission to make music out of the movement of bats…
The objective:
Our aim is to change perceptions of BACARDÍ amongst twenty-something men.
The strategy:
We demonstrated BACARDÍ’s philosophy that “True Passion Can’t Be Tamed” by challenging the conventions of how music is made – a key passion point for our target audience.
The execution:
We set ourselves the mission to make music out of the movement of bats (the BACARDÍ brand icon). It was a difficult undertaking: we needed to build a new piece of technology in record time, and had to rely on the bats making an appearance at dusk on the night – there were no guarantees that they would show up.
The live event took place at the famously epic and unpredictable natural phenomenon, the flight of bats from Congregation Bridge Austin.
The film we created shows how the project developed and how the Bat Beats track was made. It involved using a bespoke app which allows the user to interact with a series of composed sounds which are triggered by the bats movements. The live capture of the bats movements was streamed into a digital grid, with each quadrant triggering and affecting specific beats, pitches and tempos.
We digitally distributed a unique track from the experience, and a further remix (by DJ Craig Richards), will be distributed both digitally and in a limited vinyl edition of 500.
The results:
The buzz generated from the activity has, so far, generated 4 million impressions on Twitter and had 165K video views. Influential lifestyle blogs and news sites, such as Fast Company, The Verge, Stupid Dope & High Snobiety covered the project positively, giving BACARDÍ some serious kudos.
Engagement with the content on BACARDÍ social channels was 60% higher than average for these channels, with organic reach seeing a three-fold increase on Facebook.
Comparing the three weeks around the live event with the three weeks prior to the activity, online conversation around BACARDÍ AND ‘bats’ increased by over 200%, showing that a stronger association is being formed. As the brand icon, this demonstrates a shift where BACARDÍ represents more than just a liquid.
The activity is genuinely helping BACARDÍ to gain positive sentiment among consumers who wouldn’t usually consider the brand as demonstrated in comments on the video: “This is beyond amazing, I may have to give BACARDÍ another chance just for making this happen” and “This is cool!” [posted by a Music Editor].