Adnams Ghost Ship

Planning
When Adnams asked us to help them relaunch Ghost Ship pale ale as a regular beer in pubs and retailers, we knew we had to do something really attention grabbing. But first, we took it back to basics, by visiting landlords into whose pubs Ghost Ship would be placed, and find out what their insights were.

Our mission - to support pub trade, develop brand awareness and drive beer sales - led to a multi-strand strategy including landlord engagement, formal launches, point of sale materials, a one-off VIP event and a digital campaign emanating from that event.

Creative
Spring stuck to the basic premise 'Ghost Ship returns' and demonstrated it in a spine tingling way.

At the heart of our campaign was a one-night-only 3D projection onto Adnams brewery itself, which saw the brewery ripple with ghostly faces, clang with eerie noises
 

and finally explode from the force of water, to be replaced by a haunting, ghostly ship. In edited form, this haunted made its way around Norwich the next Friday night, much to the delight of the city's evening drinkers.

This happening, whilst spectacular, was just the start of a digital campaign across key social media and Adnams branded channels, and also the culmination of a landlord and blogger engagement programme in which Ghost Ship was launched formally by head brewer Fergus Fitzgerald at events across East Anglia.

Application
As soon as the 3D projection had run, Springers came back to our studio to edit and launch the video onto YouTube and Adnams. By 2am this had been achieved and we were ready to launch the twitter campaign, in which twitter users were invited simply to follow @Adnams and retweet #showmetheghostship to be sent the video link and enter a daily draw.

This campaign led to a greater number of daily entries than any Adnams competition

 

before, and within a week of launch the YouTube Ghost Ship video was topping the Adnams viewing charts, as well as leading to incremental view increases in their other content.

In pubs, a concurrent beer mat and poster campaign invited people to enter for glow in the dark hoodie prizes (take it from us - they're lovely, but don't try to put the baby to bed whilst wearing one.) which too has seen pleasing take up.

A high quality guest list for the VIP event which preceded the projection led to a great deal of brand chatter across East Anglia over the next weeks, including extensive press coverage. The event itself was a fabulous party in its own right, as a hubbub of chatter blended with sea shanties to create a fabulous atmosphere, much aided by Ghost Ship and beer cocktails.

Speeches from Andy Wood and Fergus Fitzgerald were cut short by the arrival of a terrified smuggler, who one-handedly flash mobbed the party to get everyone outside for the show.