Jacob’s Ghost is a new product in a new category segment in a declining overall market with significant competition. With a relatively limited budget, traditional media couldn’t be relied on to launch it.

Market research showed that Jim Beam has one of the strongest volume of adorers in the spirits category, so word of mouth was highlighted as a key marketing tactic that would allow messaging to be amplified.

Leveraging the strength of the parent brand in the build-up to the launch, social promotions were run through Young & Shand’s proprietary product Nudge, enabling the level of brand influence that each entrant to the promotion has over their social network to be measured. In this way, the Jim Beam brand advocates who are able to provoke action from their contacts when they share brand messages to their social networks could easily be identified. These people then became the seeding network for the launch of the new product.

Conversations about the product’s arrival in New Zealand were fuelled by leveraging this network through highly targeted direct marketing. Supported by a smart content marketing campaign that included innovative native advertising placements, their six-month sales targets were exceeded by 38%… within three months.