We wanted to amplify Martini’s reputation as a brand that doesn’t play by the rules. So when the clocks went back in the autumn, heralding the arrival of winter, we kept the summer alive by launching an emoji fluent DJ Chat Bot in partnership with Spotify.

By assigning all emojis with an emotional score, we were able to make the bot understand how happy (or sad...!) our followers were. Our followers then used this universal language to sum up their summer allowing us to provide a unique personalised playlist in response, which had either more upbeat, or relaxed tracks, depending on their mood.

In the early stages of development we knew that, in order to truly deliver the personalised engagement we wanted, we would have to find a way to add a quantifiable value to the emoji language. We needed to actually understand the emotional value of each emoji sent.

So we set about individually scoring the 1,500+ emojis with one of three emotional values; happy, sad or neutral. This now enabled us to know exactly what the users were telling us when they were describing their summer.

In fact, instead of just deciding if they were happy or sad, we could work out exactly how happy or sad they were. If they provided 7 emojis, four of which were happy, two sad and one neutral, we would know that they were 57% happy, 14% sad and 29% average. Using these stats, an algorithm then picked a proportional numbers of tracks from different mood lists; so 57% upbeat, 29% mid-tempo list and 14% relaxed.

This data combined with a playful TOV ensured a friendly and fun experience. In keeping with the spirit of Martini, it needed to be ‘time well spent’ with the brand.

The DJ bot went live across the globe for three days. 2 Facebook posts. 3 nights. 5 languages. 6 countries. 1 million engagements for €35k. That’s 40% more efficient with a 73% increase in audience engagement on the brand average. It was also named one of the Top 10 Customer Engagement Ads of 2016 by Campaign Magazine.

Our emoji-fluent Bot needed to understand the emotion and feeling behind the messages from our followers. In order to do this, we manually processed and scored over 1500 emojis for their emotional value and loaded this information into our bot.

This data allowed us to get to know our followers and how happy they were, in order to provide a personalised playlist which matched their mood.

There were literally trillions of different playlist possibilities, with no two people getting the same one. Incredibly personal and unique.

23-28 year old Millennials in Europe are living in tough times, on average earning less than the previous generation, many are unemployed and still live with their parents and have rather poor prospects for the future.

With so much macro-pressure in their lives, there is one thing that is a constant - their friends. When spending time with friends Millennials feel energized, confident, connected and optimistic about their future.

Martini targeted this desire to celebrate experiences with friends, which is arguably at its peak in the summer, by asking millennials to sum up their summer in return for a personalised playlist. This playlist would then act as a reminder of all the adventures (and Martini) the summer provided; and in a nice easily shareable format perfect for the socially native.

Martini has incredible brand awareness across its core markets (over 90% familiarity and hardly any brand detractors), however the product sales have been failing over the past decade with only 40% consumption preference. The root cause is the ageing of the Martini vermouth drinkers and brand’s inability to establish itself in the modern aperitivo occasion, which is the after work drink, usually between 5-7pm, while it is still light outside.

So it was clear our challenge was to keep Martini relevant to tech conscious millennials. We turned to social media and, using Martini’s Facebook Messenger, created the world’s first ever emoji fluent DJ Chat Bot.