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The 12 Days of Christmas get a creative twist with Bombay Sapphire
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Bringing Bombay Sapphire’s advent box to life with artist-led tutorials.
To help drive awareness of Bombay Sapphire’s art-supply advent calendar, we created a series of product demos with leading London artists. Our extensive media campaign spanned editorial articles, social platforms, a branded microsite and an online event. With a total campaign reach of 2.1 million, we successfully boosted sales of the calendar and got our target audience to #StirCreativity at Christmas.
In 2019, Bombay Sapphire and OMD UK expressed its #StirCreativity messaging through a series of colourful murals across busy UK cities. In 2020, the brief flipped, as now the brand needed to inspire people at home.
With extra time in lockdown, Bombay Sapphire’s target audience was taking up new artistic hobbies. With creativity flourishing, the brand wanted to encourage people’s efforts to fight back against lockdown fatigue. Partnering with London Graphic Centre, Bombay Sapphire created a bespoke advent calendar containing art supplies and cocktail accessories to quite literally stir creativity.
However, for the 12 Days of Creativity campaign to be successful, it was vital that it reached the right audience. This is where It’s Nice That came in. With an engaged audience and an authoritative voice on creativity, It’s Nice That was the perfect media partner to help Bombay Sapphire spread its message far and wide.
As well as driving sales of the advent box, It’s Nice That’s task was to raise awareness of Bombay Sapphire’s commitment to supporting the arts through a series of in-depth features, creative tutorials and an evening of talks.
We commissioned six creatives – all experts in the tools included in the advent box – to produce a series of creative tutorials for the 12 Days of Creativity advent calendar. We chose a range of artists across different styles and demographics, who would best capture the breadth of our network.
The campaign included a Bombay Sapphire microsite that became a hub for the tutorials and all related content, culminating in a live online event hosted by our editor-in-chief. We created a brand identity for the campaign, which included a range of doodles to give it a hand-drawn feel.
The campaign was then delivered in three phases.
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Our visual identity coming to life
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Our visual identity coming to life
Phase one
We created a series of editorial features and social posts championing the artists’ skills and practices, while alluding to the as-yet unpublished tutorials. We commissioned photographer Sophie Green to capture each creative in their studio, resulting in a series of intimate portraits and product shots. Shooting and scheduling during the pandemic had its challenges, but with the right PPE and planning precautions, we were able to overcome them.
Through topical discussions around creativity, the articles and social media campaign helped promote sales of the advent calendar and drove anticipation for the tutorial content over Christmas.
Phase two
The launch of the creative tutorials transformed our Bombay Sapphire microsite into the main hub for content over the festive period, releasing a new tutorial each day. The videos were accessible to all, encouraging users to embrace their inner artist. All tutorials remained on the site, allowing users to view each one multiple times.
We promoted this phase of the campaign through supercuts of the tutorial content on Facebook and Instagram, driving direct views to the main content on the Bombay Sapphire microsite.
Phase three
To wrap up the 12 Days of Creativity campaign and make sure as many people knew about the microsite as possible, we held the One Night of Creativity online event. As part of Bombay’s Cocktails and Create series, the event invited the audience to learn tips from artists behind the tutorials as well as how to make a festive cocktail courtesy of Bombay Sapphire mixologist Franck Dedieu. An incredible 750+ people tuned in from countries across the globe, including Mexico, Canada and the Netherlands.
- Total campaign reach of 2.1 million people on It’s Nice That
- A UK targeted social media campaign, reaching over 2 million people
- 25,000 engagements served across all content published on social media
This multifaceted campaign was an incredible opportunity for us to flex the full breadth of our skills as a team, from graphic design to talent curation and event production. But importantly, our readers were just as happy with the results as we were. In fact, one of them loved the brand identity so much they decided to get it tattooed!
“We’re delighted about how we worked with our network of talent to deliver outcomes that feel authentic to the creatives, It’s Nice That and Bombay Sapphire,” says Rob Mordue, head of projects at It’s Nice That. “Making this happen on a compact timeline during a lockdown, required a truly collaborative approach from all parties and this is what’s made the project such a joy to work on.”
"It’s Nice That demonstrated a great network of creators and delivered high quality work, whilst remaining agile to the ever changing 2020 landscape."
Brand manager at Bombay Sapphire UK & Ireland