From Urban to Urbane
New Campaign Aims to Stir New Customers, Inspire Mixology

Driving consumers to the bar with requests for Hennessy and educating mixologists about the variety of what they can serve using the brand are the dual prongs of Moët Hennessy’s current campaign to build up it’s namesake Cognac on-premise.
    “In 2007, the Hennessy brand is embarking on a repositioning and launch of a new advertising campaign and, really, a new brand communication platform called ‘Flaunt Your Taste,’” says Yvette Baez-Goss, Hennessy brand director. The campaign broke in August via out-of-home and print advertising.
    “We will continue to ramp up into a full blown launch throughout the remainder of the third and fourth quarters, including television and an all-new Web site, www.flauntyourtaste.com.”

Flaunting It
    “Flaunt Your Taste is a mentality and a lifestyle that manifests itself in a storyline where these characters are shuttled off to a French maison for a weekend by the grand dame, who is featured prominently in the television ad. It’s a bunch of young, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, urbane aristocrats who are living life to the fullest and flaunting in the process, with Hennessy as their muse.”
    A five-day shoot in the French Riviera helped capture the old world, in order to juxtapose that with the “new, urbane world,” Baez-Goss says. “It’s not about alienating our core or the essence of the brand; it’s elevating that from urban to urbane.”

Mixable and Adaptable
    While Hennessy communicates its image-oriented message to consumers, it simultaneously is communicating to the on-premise industry its message of Hennessy as a “superior, mixable spirit.”
    “A lot of people forget that Hennessy, unlike a lot of other brown spirits, is derived from white grapes. Therefore, it lends itself to being mixed with different juices, herbs and essences in a much more flexible, adaptable way than something like a vodka.”
    So, the second element of the campaign on-premise is the Art of Mixing series, a bartender education tour of five major cities in the United States. Hennessy will invite the 30 most influential bartenders and mixologists in each city for an evening with Hennessy’s master mixologists. After teaching the bartenders about Hennessy’s mixability, the hosts will them to get creative and develop their own special Hennessy cocktails.