The chance to 'Ace Rafa'

As part of our 'Champions Drink Responsibly' (CDR) campaign platform for Bacardi Limited, we enlisted Rafael Nadal, one of the world’s greatest tennis champions, as Global Corporate Social Responsibility Ambassador and set out to engage as many people as possible around the world through a massive global online promotion.

We placed the competition where young people of legal drinking age socialise and plan their nights out - Facebook. To get them to do something linked to a responsible drinking behaviour, we created a fully interactive tennis serving game featuring Rafa. Here they could demonstrate their ability to stay in control by ‘acing’ him online.

Fans who managed to win the match against the Grand Slam Champion could then enter a prize draw for the chance to meet him in Mallorca in real life. To play and enter the promotion, Bacardi customers first had to become ‘fans’ of the Champions Drink Responsibly Facebook page.

The game gave players the chance to play Rafa in a serving shoot-out

But to level the odds of competing with the tennis champion, players got to take control of RoboServ, a state-of-the-art tennis ball-serving robot.

RoboServ: built in collaboration with the geniuses at Applied Arts

The 12ft RoboServ, which we also built for real, allows players to choose a court position, and then adjust the spin and power to try and win a serve. Those who succeeded were invited to enter a prize draw to win an all-expenses-paid trip to Mallorca where they got to meet Rafa on court!

The promotion was backed by over 45 of Bacardi Limited’s markets and implemented around the world using our extensive promotional guidelines toolkit.

The event itself

The prize day created an amazing experience for the winners with PR and social content used to stimulated positive conversations about Bacardi Limited, Rafa Nadal and responsible drinking. The event was also used to seed the “do”- a T gesture signifying a time out from alcohol.

Accolades

The 'Champions Drink Responsibly' campaign was awarded the Global Brand Strategy of the Year at the Drum Marketing Awards, as well as being shortlisted at the DADI Social Media Awards.

It also won the award for Best International Communication at the European Excellence Awards.