Diageo India bets on external content creator for Captain Morgan

The first-ever partnership with an external content creator to carry out content marketing initiatives for Captain Morgan Original Rum has helped aclobev major Diageo beat efficiency and efficacy benchmarks. Diageo had roped in digital content creator East India Comedy (EIC) to work on content strategy for Captain Morgan Original Rum on a long-run basis.

Ever since EIC started producing content piece for the brand in October 2017, the organic engagements on Captain Morgan social media pages has grown from a mere 4,500 likes to over 100,000.

“The content has performed very well. Together, our efforts in promoting the content that EIC has created helped the brand generate nearly 50 million views. Each piece of content has beaten efficiency (cost per view) and efficacy (cost per engagement) benchmarks. In just about a month’s time, our Facebook page has built a following of over a lakh without running a page like campaign. For a new-to-the-world brand like ours, we have managed to generate a conversion rate of 50% on our larger video promotions,” said Khushboo Benani, Influencer Engagement and Brand Advocacy Lead, Diageo India.

EIC has ideated and created all the pieces of content that have gone live on the Captain Morgan Rum India page in the form of GIFs, WhatsApp conversations, cocktail videos and brand-centric content. The brand recently released ‘Every Saturday Night Ever’, which stars the EIC team, but all the Rum drinks videos, Captain Memes, Pun Chats, daily Captain Speaks among others.

Commenting on the partnership, Benani said, “Captain Morgan’s role in culture is to be an instigator of fun and we wanted to work with partners who instinctively understand how Indians define and consume fun content. Collaboration with EIC as our digital content partners has helped us establish a brand tonality, which beautifully combines the International Rum codes of Captain Morgan which India’s fun sensibilities.”

The core principle behind the Captain Morgan brand is the Captain himself. He's fun, he's a party starter, he's a starter of conversations. Keeping these attributes in mind, EIC has translated the values to the brand's digital content as well.

Commenting on the kind of content that EIC is generating for the brand, the EIC spokesperson said, “We enjoy making creative, fun and shareable content for our own Facebook page, so it was fairly easy to align our style and thinking to the Captain Morgan brand and create quality digital content for it.”

Keeping the content very interacting, the brand receives most of its traction through memes and puns, which talk about Monday morning blues and everyone’s love for weekends.

Brands are evolving from doing traditional brand out campaigns to being part of content/stories that consumers find truly engaging. Today especially on digital/social platforms, it is becoming increasingly important for brands to have content that is not just viewed because of the media spends but is interacted with and that is only possible if audience finds a certain empathy and relatability with the content.

“For Captain Morgan Rum, we have engaged Facebook as our lead media platform and the content is only available for viewing to the audience above legal drinking age and followers of alcohol pages. The overall content strategy is designed with a media first thinking where we are doing long format videos, 3-5 second videos which are quick and fun to watch and has the Captain himself at its heart,” said Benani on the brand’s content marketing strategy.

As part of the future content strategy, the brand aims to increase its fan base on Instagram and Twitter and will explore new mediums and styles, which will, in turn, help the brand gain more shareability and interaction.

This is also EIC’s first-ever win in the space of 360-degree content creation for any brand – across YouTube, Facebook, Whatsapp, etc.

EIC spokesperson added, “We want to make this more than just a regular brand page – our aim is to make this a page people follow for quality content that gives our audience a chuckle, makes them share posts with their friends – we want people to look forward to every new post we create and engage more with the brand. We want people to make the Captain their top choice for both rum and digital content consumption.”