Absolut Vodka is a genuinely global brand that has been bringing different people together throughout the decades to share good times. This is at the very heart of what the brand does worldwide.

In Slovakia ABSOLUT is an established brand, currently the number two on the market competing against Finlandia among premium vodkas and Jägermeister in the party segment.

The campaign aimed to stand out against the competition, communicating mainly on activation level and boost consideration, brand love and sales.

ABSOLUT needed a strong image campaign, based on our brand purpose, tied to a deep cultural insight that most of our target group can relate to.

To show that Slovakia is diverse and that it really suits us, we chose Natalie, a singer born in a small Slovak city, to be the face of the campaign. She is Slovak, speaks slovak, has a Slovak mother, lives in Slovakia her whole life. The only difference from a typical Slovak is her dark skin color and her foreign father.

Featuring a black female singer along with a well known folklore song verse “Slovak mothers great daughters you have” it bursted the advertising bubble immediately, becoming the number one topic in the society for weeks.

We let people to support the campaign in a native way. By listening to music. In collaboration with Spotify we created a branded playlist with Slovak tracks about diversity and tolerance. For each stream, we donated 10 cents to a Slovak NGO - people against racism.

In advance of the campaign, we realised a Slovak nationwide survey on xenophoby and racism to prove the problem with actual data. At the same time we introduced the survey results on a press conference along with all the details about the ABSOLUT campaign and Natalie. This way we gained the first wawe of immediate publicity.

NATIVE CONTENT - Apart from the hero video, we had to introduce the whole story of Natalie, her life and insights about living in xenophobic Slovakia. We used various media for video or written interviews to get deeper into her story.

We had 6 of the major celebrities/influencers that agreed upfront to support the campaign in the beginning to influence perception in the right way.

ENGAGEMENT & SUPPORT TOOLS

To give people tools to support the campaign, we created a branded Facebook profile badge

On Spotify, they could help by listening to music…

We kicked off with the hero video, executed more as typical music video with Natalie in the end stating that she's slovak too and that diversity suits us.

Parallel we partnered with 6 main Slovak influencers to support the campaign.

To engage with other influencers, we sent them our campaign manifetsto, a “true colors of slovakia” bracelet and a small bottle. At this point we didn’t know that there will be more than 100 influencers more joining later spontaneously to support the campaign and the cause.

All this happened, when the campaign exploded, penetrated the classic advertising bubble and gone absolut mainstream…

We offered tools to support the cause as facebook profile badges, or our Spotify activation with funding. This way we engaged the people and were able to deal with the massive hate on social media.

This was for sure the most talked about campaign in Slovakia Ever.

Literally everybody in the country who has some influence or something to say (or even not), expressed their opinion on this campaign with 66% positive reactions despite the controversy.

300+ outputs in all media types (Web, Radio, Print, TV)

16,5 milion EARNED media impressions (in a 5,5 milion country)

162 500,- EUR earned media value

66 % positive reactions in social (reactions, comments, outputs)

+ 117 % sales increase during the Campaign

+ 13 % sales increase Year over Year

Brand KPI's boost

+ 8 % brand awareness

+ 5 % brand consideration

+ 3 % "suitable for a good party" attribute perception increase