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Adam Withrington had an exclusive insight into the making of the new Bacardi advert.Drinks advertising has provided some of the most inventive and...

Adam Withrington had an exclusive insight into the making of the new Bacardi advert.

Drinks advertising has provided some of the most inventive and funny moments on television. From "tick follows tock follows tick follows tock" for Guinness, those charming frogs for Budweiser, Peter Kay "top bombing" for John Smith's, all the way back to Leonard Rossiter chatting up Joan Collins for Cinzano back in the 1970s.

The market is seriously competitive - the trick now is to be even more inventive and even more funny.

The latest Bacardi advert, which cost £1m to make and stars up and coming Hollywood star Raoul Bova, has now been on the air for a few days. It tells the story of a train porter with a trolley filled with Bacardi who misses the last night train. He is then joined by Raoul and some young ladies for a wild, Bacardi-fuelled party.

The ad is the result of over a year's work involving brand managers, advertising executives, actors, plus a film and production team. Their common aim was to continue the successful Bacardi "Latin Quarter" campaign - but how do you keep the increasingly cynical and media-savvy audience interested?

The Publican has had an exclusive look at how the advert came together and spoke to some of the main movers and shakers behind its production to find out.

How the advert was put together

John Burke, Bacardi marketing controller, said: "Drinks advertising is more about what customers think and feel about a product. It's not necessarily giving out new information - particularly for the on-trade. And this is the message we try to pass on with our advertising."

Anthony Hill, account director at advertising agency McCann Erickson, added: "We start with the brief from the client and this goes to our creative department who come up with six or seven scripts, which go through several meetings with the client, ultimately coming down to two or three which get put into script research. There then is a period of script development when the number of scripts gets shortened to maybe one or two. We then take the selected scripts to the client's representative."

Nick Goddard, agency producer for McCann Erickson, said: "Once the decision is made over which script will be used, the next step we take is to make an animatic of the script, which is like a cartoon short. We use an animatic production company which is based in Los Angeles and it, with us, storyboards out the script into cartoon frames. We then edit it all together to give us the script in a cartoon form. We voice it, put music on it, give it sound effects and that is used for research. That gives us a good idea of where time is being used in the film so we can say, for example, 'there is not enough party sequence here, so trim down an earlier bit' etc. Basically early on it gives a really good idea of whether the piece is working or not."

The shoot

Director Howard Greenhalgh said: "The advert was shot over four nights in a place called Rieebeck West, which is north east of Cape Town. Logistically it's incredible what you have to do. We found the railway station and then had to build on it and create legal party areas, because obviously you can't ram 300 people next to a platform.

"It was a working station but only two trains stopped there a day but there was traffic. You spend hours and hours of your time in technical meetings - is it safe to do that? Where is the crowd going to be? Is the train going to start before the guy comes out or when he's right behind it? "It's a very mechanical, slow process."

How to keep the audience interested

As well as directing previous commercials for Bacardi, Howard has helmed adverts for a whole host of worldwide brands, including Ford, Adidas and Reebok as well as fellow drinks brands Stella Artois and Smirnoff.

He also has directed music videos for artists including the Pet Shop Boys, Sting and Suede.

Howard's main aim for the Bacardi advert was to make it exciting for the audience, while giving the brand the best possible platform.

"The main focus of the ad is obviously Bacardi and you have to make it look lively," he said. "But what can you do? You can spin a bottle on your hand and flip it, but aside from that you quickly run out of things that you can do. You don't have time for long, juggling, choreographed pieces in the ad."

An example of what Howard brought to the process is of a shot in the final cut when "the trolley guy" as he is known, literally kicks off the party by kicking the trolley, launching a stream of ice and limes into the air and filling the glasses.

Howard added: "I wanted to do something with the ice and the limes, but what do you do with them? You can't just serve them out as normal, one glass at a time! So we thought we could nail the trolley down so when you kick it the limes would fly up - that would be one way of starting the party. You've always got to try and find ways to get little tricks like that in there to be visually impactful and impress people."

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