Bacardi Rum Mojitos, Marketing Missteps, Boomers and Social Justice

I could have begun this article with any number of examples, but since it is summertime, I’ll make my case using Bacardi Rum’s recent ad campaign featuring mojitos, a cool libation now being advertised heavily on cable television.

Take a look at this commercial:

For the uninitiated, a mojito is a highball made from white rum, cane sugar, lime juice, carbonated water and fresh mint. Cuba claims the mojito, but reports vary about where and who first mixed up the most popular adult beverage made with rum.

On hot summer evenings, the drink is a fashionable thirst quencher and mood modifier. My neighbors often mix up this minty concoction for their backyard barbecues, and the refreshing cocktails always receive plaudits from guests who imbibe.

The Bacardi mojito ad is lavish and complicated: a continuous tapestry of celebration.

Having drained his glass of mojito, our protagonist saunters through dancing crowds toward the bar. Suddenly he’s walking through a disco as if it’s the 1980s. Women’s clothes then evoke the sixties (notice knee-high go-go boots in one shot). Other dancers suggest the fifties (notice full skirts and petticoats or a geeky guy with Buddy Holly glasses).

A careful observer (who hasn’t consumed too much mojito) begins to notice that our hero isn’t just walking through a funky, convoluted nightclub; he’s also walking through time, into the past.

He pushes through two ornate doors and suddenly the parched protagonist passes through the flapper era of the 1920s. Finally he strolls up to a bar where he is greeted by an urbane bartender in dressy western garb, evocative of the late 1800s.

A catchy and retro-1980s background song entitled Daylight by Matt and Kim binds together this montage of forward momentum and backward time travel.

Bacardi then claims the mantle of mojito superiority with crisp copy to support its ambitious cinematic production: “Since 1862, the best mojitos have always been made the same way. Bacardi. The original mojito.”

This television commercial has received much praise by YouTube viewers, with a lot of credit being given to the hip song. Consumer reactions reinforce the long-understood intrinsic relationship between mood-altering libations and intense rock ‘n’ roll music. Alcoholic beverages have been connected with contemporary music since the birth of broadcast advertising.

So, what’s the problem?

Take another look at the commercial and now scrutinize for diversity. You’ll see Caucasians, Latinos and African Americans. You’ll certainly see a balance of gender, as you would expect for a nightclub evolving backward through the fourth dimension (of time). What you won’t see is anyone over the age of 40 (more likely 30) — neither in the present nor in the distant past where the thirsty customer finally gets his freshly mashed mojito.

Marketers who adore demographic targeting would argue that this spot is only for young men and women. The under-thirty crowd probably constitutes the heaviest consumers of Bacardi brand rum, and this commercial tends to run during television programming that’s most attractive to young adults.

My reaction to this ad is the same as if the creators had not been racially inclusive. A large segment of rum consumers — including those similar to my sixty-something neighbors — do not exist in this time-folding world — not now, not in 1862.

We practitioners of generational marketing embrace a sociological construct called the “cohort effect,” where early and shared generational experiences tend to shape cultural images and perceptions held by a cohort. One of those experiences shared by many young Boomers was a haunting book and movie entitled Logan’s Run.

In this dystopian science fiction plot set in 2016, on the day a citizen turns 21, called Lastday, he must report to Sleepshop for a peaceful execution. Only young adults, teens and children inhabit this future world. The sobering movie awakened many young Boomers to the downside of a society where people over a certain age do not exist. This is one Boomer cohort filter that also shaped my critical reactions to the Bacardi ad.

Further, Boomers and older consumers constitute a favorable and financially prepared market for “white spirits.” According to Research and Markets, an Ireland-based marketing research company, “While spirits consumption declines with age, as it does with most alcoholic beverages, older consumers are turning to premium products as affordable luxuries. The low-carb interest has had a positive effect as well, with white spirits being carb-free and many manufacturers quick to market their products on that basis.”

Advertising to today’s Boomer market has sometimes been addressed with perturbing creative nuances evoking the sixties and hippies, probably conceived by those who never knew firsthand the sixties or hippies. I’ve written about some of those ads elsewhere in this blog.

Another marketing misstep is well-represented by the Bacardi mojito ad: age exclusion or age denial. Older people simply don’t exist in Bacardi’s world. Maybe in Bacardi’s idealized view of its mojito market, older Boomers all went to Sleepshop.

Marketers can’t be age inclusive in every ad they conceive, any more than they can be racially and sexually inclusive, but when an ad portrays such a sweeping canvas of consumers, marketers need to consider the real world, one where people of all ages mix quite well — like lime and mint. Marketers need to consider age inclusion for sensible marketing reasons.

They also need to consider age inclusion as they have racial inclusion: a form of social justice. Notice the African American man and Caucasian woman dancing together in the 1940s segue, which, of course, would never have happened in 1940s reality. Why this creative direction? Because it’s how opinion shapers — directors, copywriters, brand marketers, advertisers — want us collectively to view a post-racial society today. Because, in this case, historical revisionism is the right thing to do when it serves a larger cause of equality.

To those stuck in exclusionary youth marketing, omitting older customers from depictions of their products, I can hardly tip my mojito glass and say, “Cheers!”

ADDENDUM: Patrick Roden, a reader of this blog post, provided a link to an excellent ad that actually celebrates aging, rather than denies it. See his thoughtful comments below. Rather than just provide a link to the Kaiser Permanente ad, here it is:

Comments

[Mike Garland]

Brent,

Just found your blog. Social justice will soon become a big deal as more missteps create a backlash against Bacardi and others.

Nice website. I agree on the recommendation to read "The Number". It should be required reading for anyone over 40.

[Carol Orsborn]

Hi Brent,
Great blog. It's enough to make this Boomer woman want to take a drink.

Carol

[Brent Green]

I'm sorry this ad might drive you to drink, Carol, but please be discrete about it: Bacardi would not want an imbibing, party-crashing Boomer woman to skew its core consumer demos older. ;-}

[anon]

I'm not sure every advertisement needs to portray every age demographic equally. Also, including more older people would undermine the veracity of the nigh club scene, as most dance clubs are primarily populated by people under 40. On a more fundamental level, our culture has idealized youth for longer than the Baby Boomers have even been alive, so we shouldn't be surprised when our advertising does the same.

[Patrick Roden]

Brent, Have you seen the recent ad from Kaiser Permanente: Do you want to be an old woman? This campaign is bold and brilliant in that it flies in the face of conventional wisdom in several important ways:
1) Marketers will tell you to shy away from using terms like “old” or “aging” when selling to boomers and beyond.
2) The traditional medical model has emphasized “sick-care” not “health-care.”

This ad turns conventional wisdom on its head and has the audacity of hope (thanks Mr. President) to ask the question straight out: Do you want to be an old woman? It’s NOT about anti-aging—in fact it’s just the opposite. Emphasizing prevention (get a mammogram) so you can live long enough to BECOME AN OLD WOMAN and experience all the unknown experiences (territories) awaiting you.

This is about “compressing morbidity” and extending health—not just extending life. And the message is delivered with the soulful sound-track of Michelle Shocked – When I Grow Up. This ad demonstrates a deeper understanding of human behavior and respects the maturing psyches of women who are living fully within their age.
See video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVR3EiwSgwI

[Brent Green]

Patrick,

Thank you for sharing the Kaiser ad as a good counterpoint to the Bacardi ad. It's interesting that both ads rely on contemporary music and emerging folk-rock artists to convey deeper brand messages.

Someone could criticize the Kaiser ad for not depicting young adults, other than in a photo held by one woman showing her former self. Of course this ad specifically targets older women with a specific service, while the Barcardi ad portrays a product that all age groups can -- and do -- enjoy.

When does an advertiser have an obligation to be inclusive? When is an ad so finely targeted to a specific group that only a small demographic segment will even care who is in the ad?

[Richard Adler]

Kaiser's "Thrive" campaign is a shining example of positive messages that are "selling" health promotion. The campaign has been creative and upbeat, with a consistent use of humor in almost all of the messages (other ads in the series do include younger people).

Interestingly, the campaign is not directly promoting Kaiser, but rather has focused on encouraging people -- non-members as well as members -- to do the everyday things they need to do to stay fit & healthy. "Old Woman" is the first ad in the series I have seen or heard that explicitly focuses on "age" - but it makes perfect sense in the broader context of Kaiser's ongoing Thrive campaign.

I am not aware of any studies that attempt to measure the impact of the campaign in changing health-related behaviors. I'd be interested to find out if Kaiser has done any assessments.

[Andie]

I think you have a thoughtful analysis of the commercial, which I truly enjoyed (being under 30 and all). However, advertising is now about representing reality, it's about getting people to buy the product. What this ad does more effectively than others I've seen is that it evokes a latent idealism in 20 year old consumers. Until recently, the idealism that members of my generation had lay dormant, awaiting release. With the recent inauguration of Obama and a resurgence in new wave counter culture, this ad pulls at my heart strings and invites me in. It makes me believe that a world without racism exists and it makes me all warm and fuzzy inside watch the images coupled with the nostalgic music of my childhood. The fact that it's for rum is irrelevant. All that it needed to do was invite me to watch the ad and it did its job. Kudos to the creative people who put it together!

[Brent Green]

Andie,

One of my fundamental points is that advertising both reflects and shapes our cultural narratives. If it had not been for over-representation of minorities in advertising targeting a Caucasian-dominated majority, ads today might not be as racially inclusive as they are. The Bacardi ad in question, with its obvious racial inclusiveness, is the byproduct of decades of advertising that became more racially inclusive following the sixties. What you might consider as "normal" was revolutionary when I was your age. My call is for age inclusiveness, as well, not just in the name of social justice, but also reflecting the pragmatic facts that one in three American adults will be over age 50 next year and that 50+ consumers control 70% of the nation's wealth. Would you have been any less enthusiastic about the Bacardi ad if the club crowds included, say, a dozen actors over age 50? I doubt you would have even noticed. But failure to include older adults in a setting full of hundreds of consumers is obvious, especially to those of us over 50. Age segregation is so 20th century, which was the last century in which the young outnumbered the old in developed countries. One day you'll be over 50, and when that time comes, I doubt that you'll appreciate being marginalized from mainstream consumer marketing as if at age 50 you just became irrelevant.

[Carolyn Barbre]

Doing some fact checking on Bacardi for my novel set in the '60s and came upon your site. The hero has just returned from Bermuda where he was writing a story about the Bacardi rum business for an upscale men's magazine where he writes a regular column. Bacardi thanks him by sending back a case of rum which he is sharing with his friends in Greenwich Village. In walks this beautiful leggy photographer(Nikon camera around neck)with flowing brunette hair. Their eyes meet for the first time. He offers her a ?

Should it be a mojito? I don't recall mojitos in the '60s. Cuba Libres, yes. Are there marketing possibilities here? Would you like to read the book?