By Ian Neubauer
A hospitality professional from Sydney’s northern beaches has been crowned the on-premise winner of Malibu’s million-dollar ‘Get Your Island On’ campaign, collecting an all-expenses paid educational trip to Barbados – the home of Malibu Rum.
Collaroy Beach Hotel events coordinator Louise Topalov beat tough competition from 50 other venues around Australia that were visited by Malibu brand ambassador, Petina Postans, between January and April this year.
Postans encouraged staff to bring the Malibu campaign to life in three ways: through Malibu Sunday Sessions events, by promoting the new way to drink Malibu and by generating an increase in Malibu sales within a three-month period in order to win the trip.
The consumer component of the competition — the search for an executive product taster and two of their mates to spend 10 days ‘working’ at the beachside distillery in Barbados – was won by Tom Bates from Sydney.
Bates and his two mates, Nick Griffiths and Sammy Curtin, will depart for Barbados later in the year.
Malibu brand manager, Jo Haynes, said the campaign was a huge success.
“We’ve been overwhelmed with the enormous effort that the participating Malibu venues went to support the campaign,” Haynes said. “Malibu has had a really successful few months thanks to the promotional activity so we couldn’t have asked for a better result.”