Every Christmas in Spain, Freixenet Carta Nevada runs a TV spot. Highly anticipated, it’s more of an event, not least because each year the spot features a different A-list celebrity. In 2007, and after 30 years of a campaign which has starred Paul Newman, Demi Moore etc. a changed was needed. We decided to switch the emphasis from image to product whilst keeping the glamour. We felt that the answer was to create a piece of cinema. But this time, we’d shift the spotlight from in front of the camera to behind it, from actor to director. Martin Scorsese was the first choice.

This was a cinematic experience for the web. We launched the news of a Scorsese/Freixenet film and began building the expectation. Film posters and non-traditional ads appeared in the press announcing the premiere. Trailers ran on TV for the film. The premiere was held on the Freixenet site on 27 November where the film continued to be screened. On December 5 it broke in 150 cinemas. And it was reviewed in official film magazines (Variety etc.) and web forums.

The media and public response has been a success. It is a national campaign that has had global repercussions. Only 30 days into the campaign, it had been seen by over a million on the internet (by the end of February, 1.4 million visits had been made to the site and YouTube). 516,043 showings in 150 cinemas. 380,000 DVDs were distributed and it was featured in over 300,000 blogs. There were over 400,000 links according to Yahoo. 22 TV stations have shown it for free as content. Consumers have chosen to spend the equivalent of 22 years with the brand.