Maker's Mark - Holiday

"Shine Brighter."

The holidays bring out something special in all of us. But for some, the season brings out a little extra. For the first truly global campaign for Maker’s Mark, we wanted to shine a light on different holiday traditions around the world and recognize those who make their celebrations remarkable, all while offering inspiration for gifting and hosting opportunities with character.

I led creative for the campaign as we traveled from the grounds in Loretto, KY to New York City to Cape Town, South Africa and St. Petersburg, Russia to capture a series of short, charming stories of everyday people who go that little step further with their gifting and hosting efforts to make the holidays more fun and memorable. These came to life via a series of five short vignettes (:06 & :15) and ultimately the “Yule Log” story was featured as a :15 and :30 TVC in the US. The soundtrack to the spots, “Jing-a-Ling” by Harbour Lights, was written and recorded exclusively for this campaign under our team’s direction and made available as a full track version on Spotify.

We were awarded as a Category Winner for Integrated Campaign in the 2021 ANA In-House Excellence Awards.

The holiday program also seemed like the perfect time to launch our new visual identity system to reach and engage with consumers in major touchpoints. We developed a suite of tools and communications focused on our portfolio range and seasonal cocktails with eye catching displays and signage as well as promotional items like our collectable holiday bottle sweater and limited-edition glassware.

Digital and social integration of the vignettes were promoted online along with targeted ads with direct links to e-Com partners like Drizly in the US and internationally we offered a gift box that contained our latest edition of our yearly sweater bottle design along with an adult sized matching sweater as an Amazon exclusive. The takeover of our home page featured a :30 montage of our campaign vignettes and led to our exclusive holiday recipes for the cocktails featured in our stories.