By Andy Young
Bundaberg Rum has kicked off a new brand campaign, which labels the spirit as ‘Unmistakably Ours’ as Diageo looks to reframe it from a Queensland brand to an Australian brand.
The campaign, which will see Diageo Australia put $20m behind the brand over the next 18 months, started last night during the NRL season opener between Brisbane Broncos and Cronulla Sharks and Bundaberg’s Marketing Manager Jodi McLean told TheShout that there will be on- and off-premise support as well.
“The big aim for us is a reframe on Bundy as a Queensland icon to an Australian icon. This is an Australian brand, it’s one of the first brands that existed in Australia and we should be on the same stage as the Vegemites and Tim Tams of the world.
“We’ve been saying that Bundy is our national drink, just like Guinness is in Ireland, we should have Bundy for Australia. This campaign is about re-asserting the brand’s rightful place to do that, but doing it in a really positive way and celebrating what it means to be an Aussie.”
A number of retailers will have started to see it roll out already for the kick-off of the footy season and McLeod said that there will also be a push of the 24-pack 330ml cans of Bundy and Cola, in a format known as The Block, which helps put the drink at a more competitive price point to beer.
And McLeod also told TheShout that this campaign is the culmination of a massive year for Bundy, with a number of activations put in place over the last 12 months.
“We started with re-signing with the NRL and getting back into sports,” McLeod told TheShout. “Then we launched Lazy Bear which has been huge for us and the category as the number one category growth driver for RTD this year and then we launched all new packaging across the range just before Christmas – the key trading period and that was very much celebrating our icon and the bear and being very proud of the brand, getting the heritage story in there and telling the background then there is this the real, big consumer-facing push behind the brand.
“Lazy Bear has done everything that we hoped for and more, from a retailer perspective it has re-invigorated the dark RTD category. We have people drinking dark spirits in the day time, which is exactly what we intended and switching from beer, which also helps from a retailer and margin perspective.”
She added: “Bundy is our local priority brand at Diageo Australia and there is absolute focus behind supporting Bundy as our big franchise and I think you can see that with the level of investment and the focus we have put behind it with all this activity.
“The big message for me is that Bundy is back, every time we have been talking to everyone we talked about the hey-day of this brand and being when we were big in culture with rugby union, when we had big iconic advertising and we supported innovation at scale.
“When I look at those briefings, this is exactly what we are doing now. We are back in sport with the NRL, we’ve got big, iconic advertising leveraging celebrities for the first time and talking about being an Australian icon and we’ve got Lazy Bear, which is absolutely cranking and has got huge support behind it. So those who have been around and know Bundy from its hey-day, they should feel like Bundy is back.”