BAIKA FRIED BACON-FLAVORED VODKA TV COMMERCIAL
CLIENT:
National Alcohol Traditions, a Ukrainian nationwide distillery.
BRAND:
“Bayka” flavored vodka.
MARKETING OBJECTIVES:
Launch a new brand of flavored vodkas on a highly competitive national market.
INDUSTRY:
Food/Beverages
BAYKA: THE BRAND AND THE MARKET
Bayka is a national flavored vodka brand, with several non-traditional flavors, like fried bacon and horseradish. It’s just a good regular vodka for a good company, a typical lower-middle segment product.
MARKET LAUNCH STRATEGY
For the market launch, we proposed a classic “teaser-revelation” scheme. The outdoor teaser campaign has created intrigue, and the TV commercial revelation campaign gained the customers’ attention. For that time, and that market and that product, the TV was a better medium to get massive customer responses.
PS. Sorry, guys, I only have the video of this quality.
The big ugly text at the bottom of the video is a health warning. Unfortunately, health warning always occupies a specific area of any alcohol or tobacco layouts due to local advertising laws. Therefore, it must be contrasted enough, and you can’t get rid of it.
THE GRAPHIC: STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD
During the launch of the advertising campaign, the typical TV advertising slot was overflowing with competitors with a much longer history of market presence, regular consumers, and much bigger media budgets.
Most of the commercials were luxury filmed table-top scenes with flow-motion herring and onion slicing or bearded anecdotes about three friends fishing or hunting.
To stand out from the crowd, especially with a small advertising budget, it took something radically different from the existing commercials.
So we created a unique animation story, with graphic, stylized a-la vintage political caricatures from the Soviet-time Ukrainian comic magazine “Perets.” Bold and coarse pencil lines and “washed” one-color palette correspond to the bottle labels’ primary color.
THE STORY: TO TOUCH THE HEARTS
First, Nikita Lazorenko, the project copywriter, created a brand name, “Bayka,” that perfectly fell into the target audience. In the Ukrainian language, “Bayka” means “folk tales.”
After that, he wrote three excellent stories, which could touch the heart of any Ukrainians. These were crafted like fanny folk-tales about glorious victories of Ukrainian Cossacks. Simple, fun, and never heard before.
All stories were specially written that look like stories of famous Ukrainian underground poet Les Poderevyansky. Each story was finalized by pack-shot with a brand slogan “The Bayka: did you heard about it?.” In Ukrainian, this slogan is two words only.
THE VOICE: WELL KNOWN SINCE YOUTH
To fasten in consciousness, all TV commercials were voiced by Les Podervjansky, the most famous Ukrainian avant-garde artist and poet. An enormous amount of several generations of peoples on all ex-USSR territory knows his voice, from youth when they secretly listened and copied his plays via audiotapes.
It’s funny but very subcultural poetry. To feel it, you must be a Ukrainian and had to remember the ugly USSR time.
This voice-over was a final essence, transformed a vodka advertising into a highly memorized TV spot.
CREATIVE TEAM
Art-Director: Mike Lytiuga.
Art direction and production supervision.
Copywriter: Nikita Lazorenko.
Brand name and scenario.
Designer: Nikita Titov.
Logo and bottle label design.
Animation: Vladimir Pospelov.
Agency: BATES Ukraine (later RAVI JWT)
Video Production: Wizard Post, Ukraine.
MARKET LAUNCH: THE FIRST RESULT
“Bayka” vodka confidently took its place on the stores’ shelves, pushed off rivals with bigger budgets, and consolidated into the customer’s mind.
The phrase “Baika: did you heard about it?” for some time has become the popular verbal meme; the ad campaign even fell into the local textbook on advertising.
The visual style made it possible to create a spectacular tv commercial video, which was entirely different from any other ads in the TV cluster and allowed to gain more prominent users’ attention with a much smaller production & media budget.
DID YOU LIKE THIS PROJECT?
Does your business require memorable TV advertising? Do you need a script or a storyboard for a commercial? And you roughly imagine the cost of media placement and production, and even have a planned budget?
In this case, we should definitely talk, poke me using this contact form.
