The run-up to the FIFA World Cup, which kicks off in late November, has already inspired global sponsorship programs and soccer-themed marketing initiatives. Take Budweiser’s ad campaign, which features international players walking onto the field, a marching band, rabid fans and, naturally, bottles of Bud. But for this tourney, the AB InBev brand has added a QR code to the spot to entice consumers to purchase a limited-edition beer on its website. Here’s how Budweiser’s direct-to-consumer play is collecting first-party data while also driving sales, according to a piece in AdExchanger.

The post How Budweiser’s World Cup Campaign Supports First-Party Data Collection appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Big brands—even those with household name recognition—require awareness campaigns, too. Take PepsiCo, whose recent brand campaigns have focused on reaching consumers on streaming services and social media platforms through video. AdExchanger looks at how the beverage brand is adjusting to shifting consumer behaviors, leveraging programmatic and tapping into cultural moments to remain relevant.

The post PepsiCo Talks Brand Lift, Programmatic, Measurement and Data Use Cases appeared first on Chief Marketer.

For ecommerce marketers, measuring return on ad spend is critical. But there are several common pitfalls to navigate, from pinpointing conversion attribution to properly gauging growth to taking into account disparate measurement tactics depending on the marketing channel. An article in Multichannel Merchant examines how to proactively address these issues.

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Old Spice released the latest installment of its playful “Men Have Skin Too” commercials this week. And this time, it’s providing an outlet for women to “come clean” about stealing their significant others’ products. For a limited time, consumers who purchase a product from its Fresher Collection will get another item (presumably the one they stole) for free and some Old Spice swag, to boot. The brand also declared its Oct. 19 launch as “Come Clean Day.”

New behaviors during the pandemic—along with consumer insights—helped shape the strategy behind the campaign. “There’s this whole notion around sharing while cohabitating. About 50 percent of women who we spoke with talked about using their significant others’ grooming products. And we know today that a lot of women love Old Spice,” says Matt Krehbiel, Old Spice Vice President at Procter & Gamble. We spoke with Krehbiel about the campaign’s latest creative how the brand is approaching experiences and its most recent cause marketing initiatives.

Chief Marketer: What originally inspired the “Men Have Skin Too” campaign?

Matt Krehbiel: One of the things that we recognized from a product standpoint is that our target loves our scent. But he also wants clean, healthy, moisturized skin. We have our Fresher Collection, which brings real benefits, and it’s an ingredient-based line. We’ve got products like moisturizer with Shea butter and a new Fiji hand and body lotion. We knew that we were bringing him something so that he could take his self-care up to the next level. But we also got some insights as we were talking to our consumers. One of the things that came up thematically was that he often just gets that little corner within the shower. And his significant other may have tons more stuff in the bathroom.

There’s also this whole notion around sharing while cohabitating. About 50 percent of women whom we spoke with talked about using their significant others’ grooming products. And we know today that a lot of women love Old Spice. So the #MenHaveSkinToo campaign was born. It features Deon Cole and Gabrielle Dennis as our two lead characters. They are married and throughout the series she keeps taking his Old Spice products, whether it’s our long-lasting antiperspirant or moisturizing body wash. This new aspect of the series brings new relationships, such as Deon’s mother-in-law with Patti LaBelle or the therapist with Nia long. We have some other fun surprises coming up in January as well.

CM: Are you anticipating an increase in product sales with women as a result of this campaign?

MK: We’re having fun with the dynamic between men and women. We know that a lot of women today buy and use and love Old Spice. Of course, a lot of men do, too. The campaign really speaks to anyone who Old Spice appeals to, but it has a little fun by flipping it on its head. Now she is taking his product. He used to look over at the women’s side of the beauty island and see all these benefits that he may have felt like he was missing out on, but in this case, Old Spice brings him those benefits. So, the tables have turned and she’s looking over at his stuff more.

CM: Overall, has the program increased sales since you started airing the spots?

MK: We launched this program in 2019 and our sales have steadily increased over the last two years on both our antiperspirant deodorant business as well as our body wash business. Our hand and body lotion is a new business that we brought in. We read through the comments during the initial campaign and we saw some people saying, “you guys should do a lotion.” And “I love that you’re doing things in the moisturization space.” So even those new products were inspired by comments that we got from our consumers.

CM: Talk about the new holiday you’ve created, “Come Clean Day.” How did that come about and how you are you supporting it from a marketing perspective?

MK: Our launch day is also going to be our national Come Clean Day. On oldspice.com, you can playfully fess up to having used your significant other’s products. And you can buy a Fresher Collection item for yourself. We have things available for the significant other, like a hat or a t-shirt or other fun products. We find that people love to associate with the brand overall, as an entertainment brand with humor. People actually love Old Spice t-shirts and swag, so it’s a great way to do that. We’ve had merch available over the past couple of years. The fun and new component is that she can order one for herself and get something for him as well.

CM: Let’s shift gears to experiential. How are you approaching experiences this year?

MK: Throughout the pandemic, we’ve tried to keep the experiential nature of the brand going. A great example is our work at the NFL Draft. Some of our previous NFL things may have been in-person, but even when the Draft was virtual we did an Old Spice robes stunt. As we look to the year ahead, we’ll be prepared for solutions, depending on the in-person nature of activities. We are planning to be around Super Bowl. We work with some of our strongest NFL partners, people like Derrick Henry, to bring our messaging to life. But we also know that the reach of that needs to go well beyond the walls of the people who are in the experience themselves. And some of the ways that we do that is by enabling people to create content, or to take part in our content, in a way that becomes shareable.

CM: How do you use your Old Spice Barbershop in Columbus, OH, to create content through experiences? Has the pandemic shifted that strategy at all?

MK: It’s a fully functioning barbershop right on the Ohio State campus where people come in to get cuts. With students back in school, we’re seeing traffic flow in well to the barbershops. Its primary objective is to introduce guys to the brand and to our grooming solutions in an authentic way. But to your point, it is also a fully functioning content studio that allows us to go well beyond the walls of the barbershop and to share tips on how to style your hair, how to take care of your scalp, as well as having some fun Easter eggs throughout, including the fact that the register is an actual old wooden boat sawed in half.

And we’ve got other fun things throughout that surprise and delight those who come in. We’ve got barbers there every day. And then sometimes we bring in barbers to our Barber Residency Program, where celebrity barbers help both create some of the tutorials and the content that we push out. It launched about a year ago.

CM: How did the idea come about?

MK: We had become a serious player in hair as the number one men’s hair brand. And we knew that part of what we want to stand for is helping guys look and feel their best and feel confident for success. We are getting that through the one-on-one interactions, but also by ensuring that he has the content. So, if he searches for a particular hairstyle that he wants or a particular solution that he needs, we’re there with the content that can help address those needs.

CM: The brand has been prioritizing cause marketing programs recently. Talk about some of those initiatives.

MK: We’ve launched “Old Spice Ambition,” where over the next 10 years we plan to help improve the life of young people by improving high school graduation rates. We want to empower students to have the confidence they need to know that they can succeed. And we’re doing that by connecting with them in a number of ways. We partnered with the filmmakers of “Black Boys,” which is a documentary in partnership with “Frontlines of Justice.” That helped us engage in discussions with kids through virtual Zoom calls. We had [NFL players] like Malcolm Jenkins and Travis Kelce engage with students and have conversations about confidence and the importance of mentorship. We’ve been really inspired by this mentorship space. Part of what we aim to do is increase the number of mentors that are available for young kids, so that they’re set up to graduate from high school and go on and achieve their dreams.

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Popeyes may have started the chicken wars back in the summer of 2019, but now it means to end them. Sort of. The QSR brand, whose chicken sandwich became a massive sensation when it launched two years ago, dropped a new product last month—chicken nuggets—as a declaration of peace and an “end” to the chicken wars.

The campaign’s cheeky tagline, “We come in piece. 8 piece,” accompanied by the image of a white flag of surrender (with a nugget in the middle), leverages the chicken wars to insert itself into the conversation once again.

We spoke with Popeyes CMO Bruno Cardinali about the multifaceted marketing campaign, how the brand drives engagement with gamification, its new loyalty marketing program and the importance of creating authentic brand experiences for consumers. Plus, he dishes on what skills marketers should hone if they have ambitions to join the C-suite.

Chief Marketer: What are the ways in which you are marketing the new product launch in terms of channels, tactics and strategy?

Bruno Cardinali: Nuggets is something that we’ve been working on and investing the time to perfect in the past few months and even a year ago. It’s something we were lacking on our menu. We launched the chicken sandwich two years ago and we then went into tackling the next one in line, which was chicken nuggets. So now we’re very excited to be bringing the nuggets to the whole market to our fans.

We’re going to be supporting that whole campaign across different channels. So we’re going to have a full plan of media and creative assets running through TV, digital and we have some radio buys as well in a few markets. We’re going to be running some billboards in Times Square. There are a lot of different touchpoints from a media perspective. And then also at the floor level, that’s when we engage with our guests on a one-on-one basis. We’re planning different local activations, tasting events and making sure that we get those nuggets to everyone so they can try them.

CM: So sampling events are a big part of your strategy?

BC: Sampling is done at a local level. We normally don’t plan for national sampling campaigns, but we do partner with different franchises in different markets and then run some sampling events. It happens on an ad hoc basis with our local partners. Normally franchises hold these events in their restaurants, or they partner with any existing events that might be happening in their city. The whole sampling initiative is a piece of the plan, but we’re focused on the TV campaign, the radio, the billboards and everything else at a national level.

CM: Why did you choose to address the chicken wars specifically?

BC: When we launched the chicken sandwich, we received an incredible of love and positive reviews. We were really humbled to see how our fans reacted, but at the same time many claimed that it started the chicken wars. So we’re taking that cultural movement, if you like, the debate of who has the best chicken sandwich in the market, and playing with that and saying, look, many people say that we started the wars, but now it’s time to say goodbye to the chicken wars, because this time we come in peace—8 piece, to be exact.

We felt it was a good way to leverage something that is still quite strong in organic conversation, social media and media in general and infuse our brand, tone of voice, our brand personality, in a way that’s making a light statement about that whole conversation and putting the brand at the center of the chicken conversation. It plays with something that has been relevant in the industry for the past two years, and puts the nuggets innovation at the center of the conversation because of the analogy between “peace” and the pieces that we sell.

CM: Do you really plan on ending the wars or is this just a step along the way?

BC: We truly believe that there’s space for everyone. Everyone loves to share food and give recommendations about a good restaurant that you have in your neighborhood or that you visited. I don’t think that debate will ever end because it it’s human nature—loving food and the experiences around food. It was a good way to market and to position nuggets at the center of the story and bring our personality and our tone of voice to life in a way that is very authentic to Popeyes.

CM: This campaign has a strong charitable component. Can you talk about the strategy behind that and why it was important for this campaign?

BC: As part of the campaign, we are purchasing one million nuggets from our fellow QSR brands, including our own, and donating them to the Second Harvest Food Bank of Greater Louisiana. We are happy with that way of bringing the story to life but also helping those in need. We’re inviting fans and guests that want to participate to also donate, so it’s something that we’re trying to make as inclusive as possible and insert some good into this whole conversation other than just the creative. We wanted to include all the different QSR brands in the mix as a sign of a saying goodbye to the chicken wars and spreading the love.

CM: When it comes to using social media as a brand overall to create buzz and trolling competitors, can you talk about how Popeyes has used the channel over the years and been successful at it?

BC: I joined the brand in early 2019. When immersing myself in Popeyes, the very first thing was a trip to New Orleans to understand the roots of the brand, the place that we come from. But alongside the full journey, you get to understand how much people love Popeyes. It’s something that really stood out to me, the amount of love and how dedicated and how passionate our fans are. So with that in mind, we’ve been developing a whole social media strategy to revisit our brand positioning, our tone of voice, our personality as a brand and how we would behave in that social media environment. We have really passionate fans who love to engage and talk about Popeyes. They love to interact with us and help fuel the conversation. It’s something that we stay on top of basically every single second. So, monitoring anything that might pop up in pop culture that we feel can make sense for us to be part of or start different conversations across the industry.

CM: How important are experiences to your marketing strategy?

BC: Experiential is an important pillar of our plan. We’re proud to sponsor and support the Wine and Food Festival here in South Beach, Miami, to get Popeyes in the hands of foodies and chefs, because we’re really proud of the food that we serve and the quality and the work that goes behind it. Our food culinary team here works really hard and does an incredible job of designing product and formulating the recipes.

We also served Popeyes at a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover reveal. We had a bunch of influencers at the event that were able to taste the product [ahead of time]. We try to infuse the brand into those specific events that bring our culinary credentials to life. Those two past events were quite important and we saw very good traction in terms of conversation and engagement around Popeyes.

CM: Talk about the role of gamification in your marketing initiatives.

BC: We’ve seen the popularity of gamification rise in the past few years. We try to bring that to life through our app that we launched two and a half years ago. In September of 2020, we launched a campaign with Dr Pepper called Love That Game during football season. They would get a promotional code that could be used in the Popeyes app for a chance to redeem some offers and enter a sweepstakes. And we just finished another campaign with gamification called Summer Road Trip. Guests could search for a destination in the Popeyes app and get a digital offer. We continue to look for more opportunities to infuse and embed more gaming and gamification into our app experience.

CM: How do loyalty programs factor into your marketing strategy?

BC: Our loyalty program is very new. We just launched Popeyes Rewards in June. It’s the first-ever loyalty program for Popeyes so we’re super excited to have that live for our fans. The program allows us to return the love to our fans with exclusive deals, celebrations, experiences and swag, and a bunch of different ways to engage with our guests. We’ve been seeing some very good traction in terms of adoption and using the program. We see a big opportunity for us in the future, as we continue to grow the base of users and then leveraging it for future results. So it’s something that we’ve been starting to promote and embrace in every single campaign that we do.

CM: What are the marketing trends that you’re keeping an eye on right now?

BC: You touched on gamification, but also esports. It’s something that grew a lot in the past year, but I think it’s still something that not every single brand has cracked—how to insert themselves into that space. I sense a small change in how people interact with brands these days. People are seeking for more authentic, genuine brand experiences and stories and product offerings. Going back to the basics, in my opinion, is a trend that is becoming really important. Consumers are paying attention to the details, paying attention to whatever product or service that you offer, making sure that you walk the talk, that you don’t just say something but that you actually do what you’re saying. I think it is beneficial for the industry and for all of us.

CM: Talk about some skills that marketers who hope to be CMOs one day need to master in today’s business landscape.

BC: Digital is an important skillset to have. And everything to do with ecommerce, social media and performance media. The landscape is growing a lot and evolving almost constantly. There are a lot of changes, especially in the media landscape. The other thing is building teams. The more you go up the ladder, the more you have to have good people, being able to search and hire them as well as nurturing and developing the people that you have on the team. The last one is more of a soft skill, but it’s the ability to create a vision and agenda and bring everyone along. The best marketers that I’ve seen are the ones that were able to join the brand, join the team, immerse themselves in what the brand stands for, create a dream for the brand and bring everyone along for the journey.

The post Marketers on Fire: Popeyes CMO Bruno Cardinali appeared first on Chief Marketer.

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But though the brand, like consumers, is eager to embrace a return to normalcy, Grey Goose is not abandoning the pivots that helped it through the pandemic. “The core of the brand is nature,” says de Dreuille, who details the origins of the only two ingredients of the core vodka: the wheat (“the best wheat you can buy, from Picardy”) and the water (from a natural limestone well in France’s Cognac region). The brand is using nature as a way to emotionally connect with its audiences through experiences, he says.

Case in point: The campaign’s ad and related digital assets don’t spell out the quality and purity of the ingredients or the manufacturing process. Instead, they show a man who, as he sits on a chaise to enjoy a cocktail, slides out of the chair and along a curvaceous path in a picture-perfect landscape. “It’s not meant to portray nature but to show how the experience of Grey Goose can make you feel smooth,” de Dreuille explains.

Paying tribute to the joys of nature was also key to the spring Grey Goose Essences launch. There the campaign focused on a woman being enveloped by graceful whirlwinds and avalanches of flower petals and leaves. Beyond the ad and digital creative, Grey Goose and platinum-selling singer/songwriter SZA partnered on a live virtual concert scheduled for July 1. The show, called “In Bloom,” will be a high-tech, multisensory experience where SZA will debut music from her upcoming sophomore album, aptly-titled “Sophomore.” Those who register on the Grey Goose site to experience the streamed event will receive a discount code for a Grey Goose Essences cocktail kit.

In general, cocktail kits have allowed Grey Goose to compensate for an inability to produce experiential activations during the pandemic. For instance, when the 2020 U.S. Open tennis tournament banned attendees, the long-time sponsor partnered with Sourced Craft Cocktails to sell a limited-edition kit online so that fans watching at home could still enjoy the signature Honey Deuce cocktails that Grey Goose has sold every year at the event. During the holiday season, Grey Goose added a trendy update of the Christmas sweater into the mix, selling a limited-edition punch kit that included a specially-designed sweatshirt by streetwear designer Anwar Carrots.

Offering these kits exclusively online was part of Grey Goose’s increased emphasis on digital during the past 18 months. “It was critical for us to really improve our digital ecosystem,” de Dreuille says. That included ensuring that its partners deliver a consistent brand experience and bolstering its search optimization. Increases in Google searches for cocktail recipes along with Grey Goose’s optimization efforts led to an almost 100 percent increase in the brand’s SEO traffic during the past year.

Continuing with search optimization is one of the top marketing tactics de Dreuille has his eye on going forward. Improving conversion is another: “We’re taking the opportunity to have a much smarter approach to our media buys and analyzing the response, whether search, social, TV…” A third is QR codes. He asserts that QR codes on the back of the Grey Goose Essences labels, for instance, enable a “depth of storytelling and information” close to the point of purchase.

That’s not to say that Grey Goose is turning its back on what worked for the brand pre-pandemic. TV will continue to be important and “experiential will play a role, bigger than in the past two to three years,” he says. “In the world of luxury, experiential has an important role to play emotionally.”

An example of the brand’s experiential activations: the Smooth Putt mini-golf events in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver this summer. Adults can reserve a tee time for nine holes of golf on a pop-up course and sip a Grey Goose cocktail. The activation allows attendees to savor the outdoors while also being mindful of COVID-19 restrictions and concerns. “We have to take things very seriously but also be playful,” he says. “We have been working on how we want to bring people together.”

The post Grey Goose Prioritizes SEO, QR Codes and Experiences in Its Post-Pandemic Marketing appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Godiva is putting $5 million behind the campaign, which coincides with its 95th anniversary. In the assets, the brand’s signature gold hue is offset by bright blues, pinks and magentas that will help it compete for attention on crowded supermarket shelves. Likewise, the voiceover for the 30-second spots references both “magnificent artistry” and “at a chocolate aisle near you.”

“We want them putting Godiva on their shopping list,” says Godiva CMO John Galloway. “To understand that you can buy us, you need to know we’re on the chocolate aisle.”

Now that Godiva is readily available at Costco and Target, Kroger and CVS, could the brand lose its premium cachet? Galloway doesn’t think so. “Some believe in the notion that scarcity drives premium. That’s not a notion I believe in.”

Galloway cites approachability, desirability and accessibility as the cornerstones of the campaign’s message. “One thing we got dinged on in the past was that we weren’t accessible to people,” he explains. “Now we’re saying, Hey, we’re a brand where you might not have thought you could walk into our boutiques, but we want to hang out with you, and you want to hang out with us.”

In fact, Godiva announced in January 2021 the closure of its 128 North American boutiques and cafés, whose pristine, precisely curated interiors had nurtured the brand’s aura of exclusivity. COVID-19 restrictions played a role in that decision, but even before the pandemic, “we as an organization had already started to pivot to refocus on CPG and ecommerce,” Galloway says. “The CPG business is where we continue to double down.”

While overall CPG chocolate sales since the beginning of 2021 are up 7 percent year-over-year, with premium CPG chocolate up 17 percent, Godiva has enjoyed a 22 percent lift in CPG sales. What’s more, Godiva’s ecommerce sales were up 77 percent last year, and year-to-date sales have increased another 22 percent.

The pandemic contributed to some of that increase, of course, and not just because grocery stores, drugstores and ecommerce channels were for many the sole sources for chocolates and other goods. “I think during challenging times, people want to go get a little bright spot in their day, a little bit of premium indulgence, and that’s why they turned to Godiva,” Galloway says. The campaign plays into that, with spots referencing “celebrations, every day or night” alongside imagery of Godiva candies certain to instill a craving for chocolate in viewers.

“At the real center of this is to open people’s eyes to a more wonderful world, one that chocolate is a part of,” Galloway says. The campaign will deliver that message via ads on BuzzFeed, Hulu, YouTube and Amazon, among other media properties and publishers, supported by social media. There will also be “a nice holiday promotion,” Galloway says. And in New York City in June, the team will be dish out samples from a branded pink truck to celebrate its 95th anniversary and “bring a little bit of happiness as New York comes back to life.”

The post Godiva CMO: Marketing Campaign Positions Brand as Both Accessible and Premium appeared first on Chief Marketer.

In just its first year, AHA Sparkling Water garnered an 8.3 percent share of the unsweetened, flavored sparkling water market. That’s all the more impressive when you realize that the brand, the Coca-Cola Co.’s first launch in more than a decade, debuted in March 2020, just as COVID-19 was taking hold.

“We did some promotion last year to launch the brand,” says Ulises Ramírez, Coca-Cola’s Group Director, Water Portfolio, “but with COVID we thought it would be a good idea to wait.”

That wait is over now. In early May, AHA and agency Preacher rolled out the brand’s first 360-degree marketing campaign, “Can I Get an AHA?” Comedians/actors Lauren Lapkus of “Orange Is the New Black” and Colton Dunn of “Superstore” star in the 15- and 30-second ads and digital assets, in which after enjoying the beverage they find themselves unable to stop incorporating the syllables “A-ha” into their speech. As well as living on YouTube and other social channels, the spots will appear on TV and streaming services, with support from OOH and radio advertising.

The repetition of “Aha” in the spots doesn’t just serve to entertain. “We need people to know the name,” Ramírez says. Similarly, the “Can I Get an AHA?” tagline is an explicit invitation to try the brand, which he says differentiates itself from La Croix, Bubly and others in part by offering an element of surprise. “It’s a brand based on discovery,” Ramírez says. Each of AHA’s eight varieties is a somewhat unexpected flavor pairing—mango and black tea, for instance, and peach and honey. “We love flavor combinations, so we brought in Lauren and Colton, who we think are a great combination,” Ramírez says.

Just as important: The pair is fun. “The [sparkling water] category has been growing. We thought we could bring bolder flavors, great combinations, caffeine [two of the eight flavors are caffeinated], and just a bit more fun,” Ramírez explains.

One might think that with this lighthearted approach AHA is targeting a younger audience. But according to Ramírez, the brand views its potential market in terms of psychographics rather than demographics. “We think of people who are open to new experiences, who like to try new things, as our target,” he says. In addition, “we focus more on when you should have an AHA—say, in the afternoon when you feel you should have a pick-me-up but don’t want a coffee—than on a specific consumer.”

While the beginning of a pandemic wasn’t an optimal time to launch a brand, there were some upsides. Citing Nielsen stats, Coca-Cola reports that sales of flavored sparkling water overall rose 24 percent in 2020, with new products and flavors accounting for more than half of that growth. Ramírez believes that the months of COVID-related restrictions contributed to that. “The fact that people had more time for themselves and were looking for little moments to freshen their everyday life gave people more opportunity to try something new. I think we were all trying to look for these little moments of happiness.”

The post Coca-Cola Launches First Marketing Campaign for AHA Sparkling Water appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Bell and her team can take credit for the positioning of the Barefoot brand, however, which resonates especially strongly after the past year. “Fun is absolutely the intent of the brand,” she says.

The centerpiece of the “Barefoot with Us” campaign is a series of ads to be spotlighted via a premium sponsorship of the third and final season of the Hulu series “Shrill.” The 15- and 30-second spots will also be visible on YouTube and basic cable channels throughout the summer, as well as supported by social media and in-store assets. “We spend quite a bit of effort and marketing on that last touchpoint before purchase,” Bell says.

One of the spots features a couple dancing together in an apartment during a date night in; another shows two women giddily preparing for a night out, while a third takes us to a small outdoor surprise party. The Barefoot wines and spritzers are part of the fun, but they’re not presented as the sole reason for the fun.

As a lower-price-point product, the Barefoot brand is how people enter the wine category, Bell says. “Wine can be scary. [The industry uses] lots of language that’s not easy to understand. Barefoot wants to communicate that wine is something to be enjoyed—fun, tasty, all those good things.” The campaign is “an invitation to enjoy wine and be a part of the Barefoot world,” she says.

Along with fun, diversity has long been a cornerstone of the Barefoot brand. The cast of the ads is as multicultural as you’d expect from a brand whose past spokespeople include actress/writer Mindy Kaling and “Saturday Night Live” star Kenan Thompson. Its very first brand ambassador—aka “Barefooter”—was the openly gay Randy Arnold in 1990, and it has supported LGBTQ+ organizations since 1988. Currently proceeds from sales of Barefoot t-shirts, totes and other swag go to the nonprofit Free Mom Hugs, an LGBTQ+ advocacy and support group, to help those affected by COVID-19. Barefoot has also partnered with another nonprofit, New Voices Foundation, to provide more than $150,000 in grants to businesses owned by Black women.

“We think of our consumer as a psychographic: It’s people who want to feel free to be themselves, be joyous in life and share themselves with others,” Bell says. Consumers are diverse, she adds, and Barefoot wants to reflect that. “Life’s more fun when you get together and can be who you are: That’s really what we wanted to get across in the campaign.”

Another element the brand wanted “Barefoot with Us” to communicate was the breadth of its offering. The campaign encompasses all of Barefoot’s products, from its sparkling wines to its hard seltzers to its boxed sangria. “We created ‘Barefoot with Us’ as a platform more than a campaign. Previously, we did a lot of work focusing on individual product lines or audiences,” Bell explains. “There’s a wine for everyone, and we’re here to help you find it. We’re underlining that under the umbrella of this one campaign.”

As a platform, “Barefoot with Us” accomplishes multiple objectives at once. “And for a marketer, it’s hard to do more than one thing,” Bell says with a laugh. “We get to talk to our audience about the breadth of our portfolio through the lens of our value system.”

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