One of the best things about working in-house is that you get to spot campaign opportunities before anyone else. For Ballantine’s, their three main content pillars of Product (drinks, obvs), People (spotlighting next level DJs and Artists in their Boiler Room sponsored events) and, Places (where they held those Boiler Room events,) were all easily covered by their roster of agencies. But, no one was producing any content that showed the brand ethos of Stay True in any meaningful way on social or digital. 

 

Enter– Stay True Cities. A branded content series that showcased Ballantine’s global presence in a city’s subculture. Each episode acted as its own mini-campaign on Ballantine's digital channels. We created not only a 3-minute film with the usual 15-sec cut-downs (yawn), but also delivered product posts, YouTube bumpers, Spotify banners and Instagram carousels. All assets were created to maximise click-through ad spend where our target audience could easily access the editorial hub on Dotcom.

 

We created our pilot episode in Glasgow with up-and-coming DJ Jasper James. This was the episode that we sold into Ballantine’s local markets, so they can create their own episodes with the global team’s oversight. Shortly after Glasgow’s release, we worked with the Ballantine's Israel market to create the Tel Aviv episode which followed the same content format. Before Covid hit, we were deep in pre-production for creating episodes in Rio, Beijing, and Cape Town. But then, well, you know how the rest of 2020 went.