Bombay Sapphire The Spirit of Exploration
The Idea
Bombay Sapphire have been running a campaign over the last few months looking at the Spirit of Exploration. They originally asked “some of the top travel, experience, adventure and explorer bloggers” to contribute pieces to start the site and then opened it up to all with a contest for you to tell your own story. They’re actually running it in two halves, one aimed at ‘bloggers’ and one aimed at people who just submit on the main site Bombay Sapphire site, although the section seems to have been closed now. Entries are judged based on reader votes and they intend to make this an annual award.
What I think
I’m having difficulty understanding why there are in effect 2 different contests taking place where the only difference is one entry has a URL attached to it – and you have to enter the same details twice. I would have run it through one way,posting entries to the blog with the link where appropriate and adding a separate category for best promotion via blogs or something.
The idea itself is OK, it’s been done before and here’s another iteration. The idea behind it is relevant to the brand, exploration being bought out strongly in the main site. It’s also excited a lot of bloggers who are writing about their story being accepted.
The main website has cocktail recipes*, information about the brand and the botanicals and a huge section on design and exploration, although some sections appear to be in the nav with no content. As a flash site, it’s well put together, they’ve got great deep linking and it really brings the idea of the brand to life.
screenshot from site
They’ve taken to heart the idea of being able to share and distribute the content and everything has the capability of being posted to Facebook, Digg and Delicious. Although I have to ask why as there’s nothing there that is really shareable, especially to Digg, which demonstrates a flawed understanding of these sites. They’ve seen the trend, added the hooks but not really the relevant content.
The Pitch
A generic pitch that didn’t really excite, probably the reason it sat in the inbox for a month. I like the idea but nothing reached out and grabbed me. I got offered some screenshots and images if I wanted, it would have been far easier just to send them through in the first place although I suppose it’s a way of tracking interest. One thing that had me puzzled was this list of key points:
Key points from this campaign:
- First Bombay Sapphire Gin brand-support outreach with blogs
- Opens the conversation with key demographic
- Develops a connection with brand and consumers
- Completely transparent campaign
Now, those do demonstrate that the email was targeted at people who write about advertising, but none of them really standout as something special. I’d like to see more detail, how it connects brand and consumers; they’re all generic reasons for using social media, not why this brand in particular is using it. So overall, OK, but nothing special.
*working my way through the cocktail pages, I got a strange sense of deja view. I’ve worked on a similar site for Smirnoff and spent a LOT of time staring at photos of cocktails and shiny glasses. They all look the same after a while.
