Alcohol and water already have a significant connection – the latter is used in cocktails, and also frozen water (ice) is a default addition to many alcoholic drinks.
Then there are the utterly funny surrogate ads from India where a well-known alcohol brand sells bottled mineral water or soda!
Hold on to that thought.
On another track, alcohol brands have been ads with the theme of ‘drinking responsibly’ for a long time as a part of their social responsibility. One could argue that these ads too are a form of surrogate advertising where they are creating a desire for the alcohol brands under the garb of asking us to drink responsibly – drinking responsibly includes drinking, after all 🙂
One of my recent favorites in this theme is by Budweiser:
Both these tracks seem to be converging – the water connection and drinking responsibly!
Budweiser, part of Anheuser-Busch InBev, started it in 2018, under the broader responsible drinking campaign umbrella called ‘Drink Wiser’. The theme was the smartly conceived, ‘Hydrate between buds’!
Budweiser had a tie-up with NBA in 2019 too, to use their players to propagate the message of consuming water while drinking beer.
The brand used the 2019 Halloween too to send a contextual message that if you hydrate (drink water) while drinking alcohol, you’d get less tipsy and hence do less stupid things! (Agency: David Miami)
Now, Pernod Ricard, the other alcohol behemoth is following suit! The brand’s latest campaign (agency: Buzzman) is deviously called, ‘Be Responsible, Drink More’ 🙂 The ‘Drink More’ is indicated to be water, of course!
The idea is very similar to Budweiser’s 2019 Halloween campaign where the point is about getting drunk, doing stupid things, and repenting later.