Bombay Sapphire has tapped five Canadian artists to produce works for its latest initiative, a program called “Artist2Artist.”
Bombay released five videos about the artists and their creations this summer as an attempt to attract fans to the Facebook page it launched in July.
Brendan McDonough, Brand Manager at Bacardi Canada, said the brand used the content to engage Facebook users and reinforce its online image.
He said that, during the three month program, the product’s Facebook base increased from 3,500 to 18,000 fans.
The videos profiling the artists and their works were produced by Vice, Bombay’s media partner, which also helped the brand select artists and promote the campaign through a homepage takeover on Vice.com, banner ads and promotion on Vice’s social channels.
Though the brand encouraged each artist to use blue, the colour of its bottle, McDonough said it gave the artists the freedom to interpret it in their own way. To launch the program, the liquor label set up what it calls a “chain of inspiration,” challenging each artist to create something inspired by the one before them. It started with Jody Hargreaves, a Montreal-based artist, who created a work based on Bombay’s blue bottle.
What resulted was a wintry, dream-like portrait of Hargreaves’ best friend, which he said was inspired by the bottle’s clean, fresh colour and moody feeling. Hargreaves’ painting then served as the inspiration for a song by the indie-pop duo Southern Shores, which was incorporated into a video shot by filmmaker Scott Cudmore.
Cudmore’s video inspired a dreamcatcher crafted by Castor Design in Toronto, a critically acclaimed design firm best known for restaurants like OddFellows. Finally, Castor Design’s dreamcatcher inspired a cocktail, featuring Bombay Sapphire, mixed by mixologist Elan Marks.
To showcase all of the artworks, Bombay had Birthplace Inc create a Facebook app, which it promoted through ads on the social network as well as program tags in its print ads. It celebrated the end of the program on Wednesday with a party at the Glass Factory loft space in Toronto.
