Ballantine’s decided to invest in associating its brand with music as it was intrinsically linked with bar culture. Yet after 3 years, Ballantine’s has had little success in forging a credible and relevant association. In fact, they were ranked no. 74 in terms of brand association with music.

Plan B was a crowd sourcing music project in which Ballantine’s embarked on a partnership with Spanish music producer, Carlos Jean, to create original music with the help of their consumers. Harnessing consumers’ passion in music, Plan B forged a new art form: collective song writing.

Carlos Jean was chosen to front the campaign for his credibility in the music industry. Having worked with music superstars such as Alejandro Sanz, Miguel Bose and Shakira, his unique style of using technology in his creative development process made him the ideal ambassador for the progressive Ballantine’s brand

Ballantine’s set out to strengthen its association with music.

The brand is now ranked no.6 in brand association: 20m video views,200,000 followers in social media,An impressive average of over 1,000 contributors per song,4 out of 6 songs released reached no.1 on iTunes,2 songs reached no.1 in radio, 1 went gold.

Carlos Jean produced the musical base and consumers uploaded their contributions (vocal or instrumental). Carlos then selected the best contributions to build the final song. Tracks were uploaded every 4 to 6 weeks to keep up the campaign momentum.

There was a web-based TV channel, www.elplanb.tv, chronicling the entire process from creation to sharing and voting on the music.The creative process was filmed and published through a series of short videos, providing a constant flow of new content to the audience through the web TV and all social media platforms.The project delivered highly valuable TV exposure. Leading prime time TV show, El Hormiguero, seized on the opportunity to empower their programme content and approached Carlos Jean to offer him an integrated weekly slot within the show, where he showcased the latest musical contributions and how he went about putting songs together for Plan B.

Importantly, the 2010/11 Pernod Ricard Annual Report cited Plan B as a significant driver in its market share growth in a challenging economic climateThe campaign delivered 50% awareness amongst the target audience and 70% of consumers correctly attributed the campaign to Ballantine’s.