Stoli Vodka Global Campaign 2018 "Whatever Drives You, Make it Loud & Clear"
The Stoli Group, the spirits company whose roots go back 80 years, launched a new global advertising campaign in June 2018 designed to give the world’s premier vodka maker a pop-culture booster shot, and hopefully, reintroduce it to a new generation of consumers.
Briefed in November 2017 and launched in the summer of 2018, we took a 360-approach with this long overdue brand refresh, intended to take the group’s best-selling product, Stolichnaya Vodka, from “hidden in plain sight” back to “pop culture”. Using television, digital, social and print through to branding across all trade touch points, we revealed Stoli’s unapologetic message – “whatever drives you, make it bold, make it last, make it loud and clear.”
Based on the idea that a silent scream is sometimes the loudest, we shot in Ukraine, each creative spot showcasing real people celebrating their unique identities and what drives them, with each fully embracing their style, passions and beliefs with conviction. Each person seems to be shouting in either defiance, joy, pleasure or as a release for their pent-up spirits.
‘Loud and Clear’ boasts an impressive lineup of award-winning creative talent who contributed to the campaign. “Loud and Clear” features music from the Oscar-winning composer, Hans Zimmer and Emmy/BAFTA-nominated composer Lorne Balfe, which elevated the drama and emotion in the piece. Oscar Nominee Rachel Morrison served as the campaign’s director of photography on the video, which was shot by directors ‘We are From LA’.
The print creative was shot by photographer Rankin in London and features the designs of graphic artist Tyrsa (Instagram @tyrsamisu, he also did the cover art for Childish Gambino’s “This is America”), who created a brand-new font, Stoli Brush, for all of the print ads. The font will be made accessible for Stoli fans and consumers alike to download and use for free.
With a budget of more than half of the 2014 “The Vodka” Global Campaign, I led the development of the campaign with the agency from research, global pitch, shareholder and regional stakeholder sell-in as well as bi-monthly market sessions to ensure markets were adapting the campaign for their own needs. Happy to report that nearly all markets adopted the new campaign and created new ideas within the campaign banner from Cambodia to Lebanon, Mexico to Montreal. My old boss used to say that “the best ideas are the ones that gift more ideas” and this one was proof positive of that.
Sales for Stoli which had been on an even keel faced with a global downtrend of vodka sales, began to even out and by end of 2018 we achieved +2% global depletions volumes.
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