Bacardi doesn’t have a digital marketing strategy, per se.
And that’s because digital is the rum brand’s marketing strategy, said Laila Mignoni, Bacardi’s global VP of marketing and creative excellence.
“We still buy TV, of course, mostly around live sports,” Mignoni told AdExchanger, “but digital is in everything we do; it’s the majority of our media spend.”
Bacardi has to be cautious about brand safety, data collection and ad targeting, however, because alcohol advertising is age restricted and the industry is highly regulated.
Most alcohol brands, including Bacardi, have pledged to comply with voluntary self-regulatory codes of conduct, including that no more than 28.4% of their audience for an ad may consist of people under the age of 21.
But Bacardi takes its compliance regime further with a few self-imposed restrictions, Mignoni said. For example, the brand won’t run advertising against gambling-related content and is also cognizant of the local time zones in any given market.
“We try to start all of our media activity, if possible, beginning after lunchtime,” she said. “No one wants to see a mojito ad at 8 in the morning.”
Mignoni spoke with AdExchanger.
AdExchanger: Considering legal drinking age (LDA) restrictions in the US, does Bacardi buy programmatically on the open web?
LAILA MIGNONI: We do use programmatic for our buys, but it’s mainly custom partnerships with the Snapchats and Spotifys of the world. We also have a partnership with Pinterest and one with Meta. Being able to control brand safety and targeting by age, demography and geolocation – this is very important for us.
You didn’t mention TikTok. What about them?
They’re not able to ensure that our content will only be seen by people over 21, so we’ve never advertised there. We just can’t guarantee that our media won’t be consumed by people under the legal drinking age.
How does Bacardi approach data collection?
We are cautious when it comes to data acquisition, which also applies to purchasing, storing and sharing any data. Everyone in the company goes through data responsibility training to ensure they know not only the rules and regulations, but also specifically how we think about data security.
For access to data, we often work with partners. For example, we have a big activation in partnership with Live Nation. They have a great database, as you can imagine, because they represent so many musical festivals and theaters.
How does the partnership with Live Nation play out?
Bacardi is not in the data business, which is why we like to tap into our partners.
For us, second-party data is sometimes better than first-party data, because a partner’s audience is the specific audience we want to reach.
Music lovers are a core demographic for us. Live Nation has a great system for data deduping and for triple checking age requirements.
What about your own first-party data?
We do collect some of our own first-party data, mostly related to ecommerce activity and our own websites. We also have brand loyalists who want experiences from us or access to limited-edition products, including customized items [such as personalized bottles and labels]. Some of those products are only available from us directly.
We look at first-party data as a way to personalize experiences, rather than just for ad targeting.
Because, beyond ethical questions, there’s the question of whether it’s even efficient. A few years ago, we played around with dynamically optimizing creative by changing the drink, the occasion depicted, the time of day – that sort of thing – based on what we knew about someone. It did well, but not amazing, and maybe that’s because it was a little too personalized, a little too “Big Brother.”
But is Bacardi experimenting with generative AI?
Being respectful of intellectual property is very important to us. We never use any content that’s not proprietary. We are playing around with generative AI, though.
One example is a partnership we did with Boi-1da, a Grammy Award-winning producer who worked with Drake on “God’s Plan,” to train an AI model on some of his unreleased music. Then we invited other artists to upload their original music and generate variations using his beats.
We were very careful, though. For example, we had a filter to scan everything that was uploaded to make sure there were no IP issues with any of the lyrics or tunes.
What about using generative AI for ad creative?
We’re looking into it for copy variation. And in the long run, we’d consider it for image variation to change out the backgrounds for package shots – like a cityscape for a beach or vice versa – although only using proprietary images that we commissioned and own.
But we haven’t done either yet.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.
For more articles featuring Laila Mignoni, click here.
