Most brands now want to be part of culture. But only few remember that you can’t just buy that spot. You can be introduced to culture, you can support it, work with and for the people that make it. But plundering it from afar won’t earn you any respect, legitimacy nor excess of consideration. During the past 3 years, we’ve been working hand in hand with Havana Club’s global team to launch and sustain the cultural implementation of the brand and best lead the target shift the group decided to operate. With the advent of hip-hop, a black-made and inspired culture, as the dominant part of the popular one, lots of brands have been trying to get their part of this ever growing cake.
At Yard, we’ve always addressed this phenomenon from a qualitative & culture-led point-of-view rather than a quantitative media-led point of view. Flipping the script, from the thrill of an instant value transfer, to the power of a sustained relationship. We believe cultural implementation takes time and most importantly process. And it's the vision we are following with Havana Club at all marketing levels: brand strategy, influence strategy, advertising, social media or marketing activations.
We started with collabs. And the collaboration between Skepta and Havana, is a great illustration of how this integrated approach can lead to business and influence growth. We immersed Skepta into the Cuban culture, visiting the country, to create synergies between our Havana Club’s DNA and the artist’s identity. He therefore created his own bottle label, from what he had seen and experienced, writing his story of the collaboration, what he wanted to celebrate, what he wanted to tell about himself and the key values he wanted to stand for.
The main topic of the collab being the link to local communities, we found perfectly appropriate to eventually launch the bottle first through UK’s very own retail network : the cornershops. More than a store, cornershops - like Skepta’s famous one in Tottenham - are true cultural landmarks, where people meet, where street culture lives and evolves.
We helped the brand work this way with many other artists and brands like Pigalle, Aries Aries, Daily Paper, Retro Super Future…
Alongside the work on collaboration, we developed the social strategy of the brand on socials, amplifying what the brand was doing on the ground, including collabs, to grow our presence as a member - not an opportunistic one - of culture. Allowing Havana Club to truly embody its community and connect with it through many marketing activation and event sponsorship.
Starting from collabs and social media posts, we ended up creating Havana Club’s new global brand campaign as a great anthem echoing to everything we have been doing together and flooding todays culture with the Cuban state of mind that relates so much with it. (A long sentence)
Through all the marketing touchpoints activated: success eventually comes from the meaning and depth of the link your brand chooses to build with artists, influence in general, and people overall. Those that truly shape the culture you seek to take part in.
