Euro’s Pucker vodka TV right mesh of sound and visuals

DJ Steve Aoki’s “Ladi Dadi” scores Pucker campaign

When it comes to marketing liquor — especially those products aimed at a young adult demo — it of course helps immeasurably to be extraordinarily alert to current trends in popular culture.

If nothing else, those who enjoy drinking in public — and that includes a wide swath of young Americans — certainly want to be perceived as trendy. 

So it makes perfect sense for Euro RSCG/Chicago to refresh its bold, brash — yet utterly simple at its core — campaign for Pucker flavored vodkas with a new round of TV spots that feature an exclusive remix of iconic deejay Steve Aoki’s tune “Ladi Dadi.”

We hasten to add that we don’t profess to be an expert when it comes to singling out the best and hottest deejays on the nightclub circuit, so we defer to sources much better tuned into that scene than we are.  In an article published just last week in Billboard, the bible of the music industry, Aoki was referenced as one of “the biggest celebrities” on today’s electronic dance music scene.

Apparently Aoki also is one of a small number of deejays who are also making a big splash on the advertising front, as they have cut deals with various products to use their music in commercials.  It stands to reason such marriages work well for brands that want to demonstrate they are in tune with popular culture, even as these marriages create great exposure for the artists and deejays whose music is heard in the commercials.

Perfect mesh of visuals sounds in Aoki’s “Ladi Dadi” remix

The Pucker commercials are especially well suited to the Aoki sound because  they are nothing more nor less than explosions of fruit and vodka droplets captured on film in especially dramatic fashion.   What makes the fusion of images and Aoki music work particularly well in this instance is the manner in which the visual explosions have been perfectly calibrated to coincide with the electronic explosions, if you will, in Aoki’s “Ladi Dadi” remix.

In addition, that perfect mesh of visuals and sound works to make one much more aware than one might otherwise be of both the music and the message about the bursts of fruit flavor that are a big selling point for Pucker vodka.

This latest Pucker campaign, by the way, was designed to introduce two new fruit flavors to the vodka brand’s lineup:  Raspberry and lemon. Even the formal names of the new flavored vodkas — “Lemonade Lust” and “Raspberry Rave” — suggest this is a brand that isn’t at all shy about touting its youthful image.

No campaign of this sort would dare show its face in today’s advertising world, however, without a social media component.  So Pucker has festooned its Facebook page with the two new TV spots.  And at puckervodka.com and on the brand’s Facebook page, one can also download a fuller version of this new “Ladi Dadi” remix.

ECD Peterson producing smart advertising for Euro

Euro ECD Jason PetersonWith this Pucker vodka campaign now going along full tilt, it is ever more apparent Euro RSCG/Chicago creative director Jason Peterson has definitely found his creative groove — a good groove — at the agency.

An online video produced by EuroRSCG that we raved about when it debuted several months ago — Sauza tequila’s “Make It With a Fireman” — has now become an exceedingly hot commodity.  The video — which features talented actor Thomas Beaudoin as the helpful firefighter who knows how to make a mean margarita with a twist — has already set on fire more than four million viewers on YouTube alone. 

Now newspapers such as the Washington Post and the New York Times have jumped on the bandwagon for the video in recent weeks, but only after the public showed its overwhelming approval for a bit of smart, sexy, witty advertising magic that came out of EuroRSCG/Chicago.

And though we never doubted Peterson could demonstrate strength in the liquor category where, as we said, trendiness is so important, we now have seen that he also has the ability to produce great work that isn’t all about the latest and the hottest.  We refer to the admirable work for Cracker Barrel restaurant chain and Reynolds wrap, which may seem terribly old-fashion compared to the Pucker and Sauza tequila advertising.

Yet that old-fashioned work for Cracker Barrel and Reynolds wrap is, in its own way, just as hot and fresh because those ads embody the best attributes of good advertising — attributes that have gone missing from too much advertising today.

Agency: Euro RSCG for Pucker Vodka/Beam Global. CCO, Jason Peterson; ACD, Benny Jackson; copywriter Ecole Weinstein; photographer, Martin Klimas.

Production company: Paranoid US, Culver City, Cal. Director, Nieto; EPs, Claude Letessier and Jamie Miller; producer, Lisa Cowan.  DP, Tom Lazarevich. 

Post: Paranoid Design Studio, editor, Damien Martin. Music, Duotone Audio Group, New York.     

Contact Lewis Lazare at LewisL3@aol.com