Diageo GB invests in digital for Smirnoff

Diageo Great Britain is investing significantly in digital activity for its vodka brand, Smirnoff in 2011, with a +115% increase in spend on last year.

A focal point for the build-up of activity has been the brand’s successful experiential programme - the Smirnoff Nightlife Exchange Project (NEP) - a global initiative which celebrated the best of nightlife from around the world on one night, November 27, 2010, inviting consumer-generated ideas for the event experiences via a Facebook hub.

The project achieved 18,000 attendees worldwide and generated over 33,000 unique nightlife ideas across the 14 countries, creating a global community that will continue to interact.

This has been bolstered with media and Twitter activity engaging the Smirnoff online community and targeted support from partnerships with other key digital players including wOOt Media, Spotify, YouTube and Time Out.

Smirnoff has also taken advantage technology such as RFID (radio frequency indicator), which was used at the NEP event in London via wrist-bands that event participants were given upon arrival. Having previously opted-in to use the RFID technology during the evening, participating users had their Facebook status automatically updated at various checkpoints across the venue to reflect their movements on the night and the experiences they were enjoying, which resulted in 1,786 ‘likes’ posted on Facebook by the attendees.

Following the arrival of a number of location-based technologies to the market, Smirnoff has partnered with O2 to trial SMS targeting to drive involvement with the brand. Using O2’s Geo and Proximity technology allowed Smirnoff to raise hyper local awareness of regional events relating to NEP that were happening across the UK.

1 January 2011 - Felicity Murray