Tanqueray planned to launch a new gin in Spain, the most competitive gin market, driven by local premium flavoured gins, and with serious advertising restrictions for alcoholic beverages. We needed to create a PR first idea that connecting with people through culture was able to ensure all the awareness, impact and media coverage that we were not able to obtain through traditional advertising.

Tanqueray planned to launch a new gin in Spain for the first time in years, being Spain the most competitive gin market, driven mostly by local premium flavoured gins, and with serious advertising restrictions for alcoholic beverages.

The plan was to introduce an original recipe that Charles Tanqueray created as a tribute to Seville, called Flor de Sevilla. Tanqueray needed a strong response: a powerful launch strategy idea that cut through all the noise and let us reach a wide audience.

For a brand that comes from the UK, we needed to be not just impactful, but also to create a powerful cultural connection to establish Tanqueray Flor de Sevilla as a legitimate tribute that celebrates Seville’s heritage.

We needed to create awareness of the new product, generate word of mouth and earned media coverage that would help the idea conquer Seville first, and then the rest of Spain.

In 1992, for the World Universal Expo of Seville, the famous Spanish singer duo "Los del Rio" (authors of la Macarena) wrote the song "Seville has a special colour". The song soon became an anthem for not just the Expo, but the city, though curiously never revealed what that colour was. Since then, that expression became part of the city's culture, but the question remained unanswered.

Until we decided to find it, and make it part of our product. We created “Searching for the special colour of Seville”. A study based on Data to find out the chromatic identity of the city through the analysis of its streets and the most emblematic corners and monuments.

An idea that would resonate specifically with the people of Seville, but would also grab the interest of the rest of the population, so that they would talk about it.

The strategy was to create a PR first idea that connected with people through a cultural insight (Even though everybody talks about it, nobody knows which is the special colour of Seville) to ensure all the awareness, impact and media coverage that we were not able to obtain through advertising due to legal restrictions for alcoholic beverages.

Having already the color and the idea that was going to with the people, what we needed was a partner to certify the color, that helped us make it the official color of the city, and a mediatic hot spot that shall empower the media impact: PANTONE, Seville's City Council and Feria de Abril (The April Fair).

Once we found the special color of the city, we put it in the bottle and we gave it to the city as a tribute. We partnered with the City Council, Los del Río and Pantone and we presented, both the color and the gin, in a reveal event during the "Feria de Abril" (April Fair), the most important and mediatic event in the city. Then the city council recognised it with a plaque and lighted up the most important monuments with that colour and "Los del Río" rewrote the original song, adding the colour to the lyrics 26 years later.

"El color especial de Sevilla" was certified by PANTONE, transforming Seville the first city with its own PANTONE colour. In terms of sales, Tanqueray became the number one-selling gin on Amazon on the first week, and the best selling gin during Seville city fair (even beyond our main conpetitor, an actual sevillian gin). Two months after the launch of the product, it was out of stock in some parts of Spain.

The city council recognized it with a plaque and lit up the most important monuments with that colour.

In terms of PR we got more than 120.000.000 impressions, that meant more than 2.000.000€ of earned media value. Regarding social media, the reach was over 25 millions and there were an astonishing engagement of 300.000 interactions.

The special colour became a trend. Fashion magazines started talking about it as the season colour. Important publications related to tourism, like Lonely Planet, invited people to discover it. The project was one recognized as one of the most outstanding creative projects of 2018 by the prestigious magazine Contagious.

The campaign was based in a local insight, relevant throughout the whole country but specifically for the region of Seville. The creative idea couldn't be more local, because it was to find the chromatic identity of the city. And also the PR implementation was essentially designed from a local relevance point of view, creating the launch event and reveal of the colour and the gin during the "Feria de Abril", Seville's annual local fair, a nationwide famous festivity and the most important time of the year for sevillians, a key decission that helped us gain even more earned media thanks to the national media coverage of the event.