Baileys aims to turn around ‘lack of inconsistent messaging’ in brand repositioning to trigger year-round success
Baileys has launched a fresh wave of advertising in a continuation of its plight to encourage year-round consumption of the liqueur, as it admits it the brand has lacked a “consistent and compelling means of triggering consumption”.
Don't mind if I Baileys
The new ‘Don’t Mind if I Baileys’ positioning, created by Mother London, returns the brand to its original draw as an indulgent treat, but will also act as an umbrella platform to encompass Bailey’s summer campaign that tied the brand to coffee and cocktails, as it strives for more consistent messaging.
While the brand has performed well over the past year –net sales were up 11% driven by increased off-trade visibility and on-trade activation – growth had slowed following a wave of flavour innovation, and the brand felt new messaging was needed to stimulate year-round purchase.
“The brand performance in the last couple of years has been quite stellar,” Baileys Europe marketing director Anna MacDonald told The Drum. “Prior to that we were struggling to get the next wave of growth after a long period of growth since the launch in 1974, and then when we launched flavours in 2005 we had a peak. But inevitably when a brand isn’t growing as fast as we would like it to, often what that leads to is change, but what we have tried to do is go back and really understand why consumers love Baileys, why they drink it and not over complicate that message, so try to lean in to when it was at its best”.
“What I would hope is you would see some consistency, and from my point of view, I would hope this campaign would run for quite a long time and we will see more of that in the second half of the year”.
The campaign launched in the UK last week with five TV adverts, programmatic digital advertising, partnerships, social media engagement and below the line content that leverages cultural food and drink trends. On social media, Baileys’ followers will continue to see different serve suggestions, both theatrical and every day.
Come spring 2017, coffee and Baileys will once again take the lead, with iced coffee a particular focus, to compliment to the brand’s coffee programme. Since launch in the second half of this year Baileys has seen a “good reaction to the campaign” both through its advertising and sampling drives.
“We’ve seen from research 80% of consumers said that they would be interested in trying Bailey’s with coffee, so we know that it definitely drives future purchase intent,” continued MacDonald. “You will continue to see, even in this campaign coffee and Baileys is still a consistent serve that we are promoting.”
The Irish cream liqueur is also looking at the possibility of introducing a new almond flavour Baileys that is seeing success in the US as well working on a campaign on Snapchat.