KAHLÚA: STIR UP

Kahlúa is an iconic coffee liqueur that has been around since 1936. But unfortunately it’s not a liqueur brand that is top of people's minds. Kahlúa needed to stand up, take center stage and remind people of the iconic coffee liqueur they are.

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Kahlúa is seen as much too much - it’s literally made of coffee, rum, and sugar. When a bottle of Kahlúa is opened, things are bound to get a little dramatic. So we decided to embrace it.

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We needed to be bold and loud to match the drama Kahlúa brings in real life. We needed to force people to sit up and take notice. 

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And what better way to do that than get the queen of drama herself, Salma Hayek, to literally kick down your living room door?

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We created a series of short social films chockablock with as much dramatic fun as we possibly could within the short timeframes we had. Delicious cocktails appeared out of nowhere, cherries coming out of hands, gasps, quick cuts, and of course, Salma Hayek kicking down said doors. How could anyone ignore that?

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Inspired by the over-the-top drama of the beloved telenovela, we built our very own distinctive Kahlúa world. We took what made telenovelas great and turned it up to eleven.

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We may not have had a big media buy but what we do have is better: Salma Hayek, one of the internet’s favorite celebs, and access to her 27.6 million Instagram followers.

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RESULTS:

• Our hero film GASP! has been viewed 2.1 million times and liked over 60k times

• Views on Kahlua’s YouTube page are up 933% compared to Kahlúa’s previous campaign videos

• Online searches for ‘Kahlúa’ are up by 39% (source: Google Trends, October 14th to November 23rd).