SoCo promo evokes Mardi Gras
Southern Comfort is putting pubs at the centre of its plans with a £1m carnival-themed promotion.
In a fresh direction, owner Bacardi-Brown Forman (BBF) is drawing on the brand's New Orleans roots, home of the legendary February Mardi Gras street carnival, for a four-week push next month. It hopes the promotion will drive trade during one of the quietest months of the year.
Entitled SoCo Mardi Gras, the promotion aims to recreate the spirit of the New Orleans event in pubs through a raft of ideas. The bulk of the activity will take the form of experiential marketing, designed to give groups of friends in the target 18 to 24-year-old bracket a memorable night out.
BBF has devised programmes for each sector of the on-trade including PoS kits containing branded beads, masks, inflatable chairs and T-shirts, which consumers will receive when they buy a SoCo drink. Outlets will also be given T-shirts, pitchers and stirrers that change colour.
In keeping with the spirit of Mardi Gras, pubs will be encouraged to "create a party atmosphere" with various additional ideas such as holding limbo contests and offering prizes to two customers who are judged to be the Mardi Gras king and queen in a participating pub.
Lois Ireson, Southern Comfort brand manager in the UK and South Africa, said: "We are spending more than £3m this year and want to bring the vibe and feeling of Mardi Gras. "Hopefully February is the time to bring people out of hibernation.
Mardi Gras is about having a big party, and the best place for that is the local on-premise. "We'll be running TV adverts from the last week in January. We know when the brand's on TV that the rate of purchase goes up."
