Sagatiba
Sagatiba is a cachaca, a fairly potent spirit from Brazil that's used to make caipirinha cocktails. When they came to launch in Britain, they had a clear target market in mind - the trendies who don't like to be overly advertised to. Saatchi & Saatchi's main press campaign featured the famously iconic figure of Christ the Redeemer with his outstretched arms in conventional situations, like the back of a cab or in a poolhall. Our job in the integrated department of the agency was to create some kind of teaser for the campaign.
We felt it was best to go street and go subtle. So we created a stencil of our Jesus Man which was then stealthily placed as graffiti in the areas where all the trendy bars are. Sure enough, people started taking pictures of this mysterious figure and posting them on sites like Flickr.
A few weeks later we provided a few more clues to any curious passers-by with flyposters featuring the same figure but in different guises. Each execution was essentially a personalised poster for the bars we knew stacked Sagitiba and was placed in close vicinity to them. Again, this generated a lot of interest with the "in" crowd. It also created a massive buzz amongst the underground artists, even pissing off quite a lot of them that an ad agency had dared intrude into their domain.
It all became crystal clear with the launch of the main press campaign what these teasers were really all about. There was also an accompanying BBC documentary "Inside Saatchi & Saatchi" which was all about the genesis of the campaign.
Here's our Jesus stencil in action in the streets of London.
He likes to get about, this boy.
Cheeky.
Here's the personalised poster for the Tea Bar in Shoreditch.
In situ.
And the one for another Shoreditch bar - the Drunken Monkey.
In action.
Here's the poster outside the Cargo bar in - yep, you guessed it - Shoreditch.
The Home bar's poster. No prizes for guessing which part of London it's in.
There was a bar called the Kosmopolitan. It is sadly no more. Damn you, recession!
This one's for the Lab Bar in Covent Garden.
The whole campaign attracted a lot of attention in the press and on the web. A lot of people were quite annoyed when they realised that they were being advertised to but I'm sure they ultimately got over it.
