Captain Morgan is the #1 rum brand in America, but awareness of the brand had fallen year over year, particularly with younger consumers. It was clear the brand needed to win culture in a big way to accomplish a spike in awareness amongst Gen Z.

Today’s young audiences value inclusivity, accessibility, and the unconventional. For Captain Morgan to engage them, they would need to produce a campaign that is not only large in scale, but meaningful as well.

Luckily, the brand could take advantage of its partnership with the NFL given its sizable audience. Our objectives were threefold – (1) recruit new drinkers, (2) increase brand awareness, and (3) increase meaningfulness (affinity + social power).

Captain Morgan has always been about adventure, so the brief was simple – make history by inspiring adventure. Something the brand is no stranger to and can accomplish once more, but on a much larger

There is no greater way to demonstrate to consumers that Captain Morgan embodies adventure than by having them truly experience it! So we set out to produce the most epic adventure in history.

“Follow the Captain'' was a NFL season-long treasure hunt for once-in-a-lifetime experiences that could only be pulled off by Captain Morgan, a brand well known for instigating adventure. Every brand touchpoint from the bottle itself to social posts to ads became an invitation and a chance to participate, turning every moment with Captain Morgan into an unforeseen adventure. We invited people to Follow the Captain down a path where anything could happen, from insane watch parties, to exclusive stadium sections – all culminating with the ultimate Super Bowl experience.

The message would be simple – Follow the Captain, find clues, and unlock adventure. Every piece of branding offered consumers the potential to unlock something even bigger.

Captain Morgan (CM) is one of the most consumed spirits brands at NFL games and stadiums.

Our target audience for this campaign was legal drinking age adults and football fans with a focus on Gen Z - which don’t respond well to traditional advertising and make up a large portion of NFL fans. They know that every football game is an adventure waiting to be unlocked. We needed to remind them that the gameday adventure is even more exciting with Captain Morgan. By creating events and programming in local markets and in partnership with their favorite football teams, they could truly experience this for themselves.

So we launched a history-making, NFL season-long scavenger hunt that instigates Captain Morgan’s spiced-up flavor of adventure all over game days. Our approach was to capitalize on the Captain – the iconic symbol on every bottle of Captain Morgan – as a symbol of adventure.

Each week throughout the NFL season, we dropped clues via TV spots, social posts, billboards, sports bars and more.

All our clues featured unique codes that linked to our hub, FollowTheCaptain.com. The path was simple – See the Captain, find a QR code or URL, and unlock adventure and treasure.

In Dallas, fans followed the Captain to the first-ever home/away game where they were greeted by the cheer team and drumline and watched the away game from the Cowboys field on the stadium’s jumbotron.

In Los Angeles and Phoenix, fans followed CM to their very own section of the stadium.

In New York, some fans followed CM to a house party with Giants legend Victor Cruz while others followed the Captain to an epic rivalry watch party with Cruz and die-hard Jets fan Action Bronson.

And a few lucky fans followed CM to Vegas for the ultimate Super Bowl party.

Media headlines and social posts raked in over 6 billion impressions. The campaign also reached and engaged just over 1 million total new and existing consumers.

Visits to the FollowtheCaptain.com website came in at over 672,000, over 68 percent more than anticipated. Over 159,000 consumers entered our sweepstakes, 59 percent more than our initial targets, doling out 1,146 total prizes. The attendance across all the tentpole activations came in at over 6,000 attendees with each event’s occupancy reaching full capacity. Positive brand perception increased 15% throughout the course of the campaign. Our key goal was to recruit new consumers for the Captain Morgan brand with an expected conversion of 50,000 new consumers. Overall, the campaign exceeded their conversion targets by 26 percent, collecting over 63,000 units of first person data from consumers interested in following the captain beyond football season.