Global Cognac brand Hennessy is a company that prides itself on creating out-of-the-box partnerships to heighten the consumer experience, much like its beverages do. Hennessy engaged world-renowned contemporary artist, Kaws, to create edgy artwork for a limited-edition label for the Hennessy V.S. bottle.one50one was tasked to create an integrated marketing campaign around the Hennessy Kaws partnership, highlighting the Kaws-designed Hennessy bottle to a diverse audience.

The bottles would be distributed over a year-long period, so one50one needed to keep consumers engaged during this time. The team needed to build up to the release, but also be able to tell the story over and over again to consumers who missed the launch.A goal of the program was creating an experience to engage consumers on multiple channels and senses. To socially integrate both Hennessy’s and Kaws’ fans, one50one designed a campaign in a communication space where both brands’ fans cohabitated.

one50one took a multichannel approach and deployed a digital/social/mobile strategy:Digital – To capture the collaboration, one50one created a series of videos to engage consumers in the story of how the partnership unfolded. one50one filmed Kaws’ visit to Hennessy headquarters in Cognac, France, and had Kaws narrate how the Hennessy craftsmanship inspired the artwork on the label. They also filmed Kaws at his New York City studio. They released the videos at intervals and on various channels.Mobile – one50one designed a branded QR code using Kaws-inspired colors and an image of the bottle, and built a Kaws-branded mobile website as the back-end of the code, which prompted visitors to watch the videos. The code was printed on each bottle. In addition, visitors could download the label as wallpaper for their phones, access recipes, and locate stores that carried the limited-edition bottle.Social – A simple and effective way to spread awareness about the campaign was to use the power of the people – and Facebook. one50one placed a call-to-action to “Like” Hennessy as a prominent item on the mobile website, directing consumers to share it with friends.The video shorts obtained more than 7,000 views across multiple channels. The Hennessy Kaws mobile wallpaper was downloaded more than 101,000 times in the first three months of the campaign. Branding the bottles with a QR code enabled the experience to be new to users throughout the campaign. Over the course of six months, the custom-branded QR code obtained 1.3 million scans.