How a change of strategy prompted a change of momentum

In the spirits market, brand momentum is all.

With the exception of one or two ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ brands, the majority of brands tend to exhibit growth or decline over a 10 year + basis.

Ensuring your brand has strong positive momentum is therefore the key challenge for marketing.

Havana Club was showing positive (if frail) momentum, with volume growth and share growth. It was up against marketing behemoth Bacardi. With a positioning based on Latin spirit and parties, Bacardi was intent on stealing both credibility and trendiness from Havana.

Reasserting Havana Club as the genuine, credible, trendy Cuban brand to consolidate and ideally enhance positive momentum was therefore critical.

Havana Club ambition was to become an iconic brand, and the preferred alternative to Bacardi.

Being the only international Cuban brand, we decided to make it the icon of the non-aligned Cuban culture. And to embody it.

The “Nothing Compares to Havana” campaign is a long-term approach combining global scale and local implementation. It spreads Cuban culture and values in a non-aligned way, through advertising but also innovative brand content and experiential initiatives, such as “7 Days in Havana”, the first feature movie ever co-produced by a brand.

Results

Across 3 years, we accelerated Havana Club’s growth against Bacardi.

We effectively grew share of the growing rum market, at the expense of Bacardi.

We did this by establishing ourselves as the genuine Cuban rum, and importantly, using that to develop credentials of “iconicity” among consumers and key influencers.

This “cultural branding” approach, rooted in the brand culture and offering an alternative cultural proposition enhanced the brand momentum.

Havana Club has become a global benchmark among the Pernod Ricard organization, was elected #1 Spirit Brand by the top bartenders worldwide, and won the Grand Prix EuroEffie for creative effectiveness in 2012.