Bacardi 150 Years
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The Story of El Coco — celebrating 150 years of Bacardi with a global brand campaign and airport duty-free activation at Heathrow T5.
A global integrated branding communications and marketing campaign celebrating the 150 year anniversary of Bacardi Rum making.
Using unique historical brand assets in the Bacardi archive, our creative team captured the energy and life in
Cuba throughout the history of the brand.
Multiple airport store locations - Globally.
Celebrating a brand icon
From the outset, our brand team executed Bacardi's 150th anniversary brand activation strategy in airports, focusing on a seamless collaboration with Bacardi Global Corporate Communications. By involving them in brand briefings, we established an effective process that enabled our creative team to showcase the latest assets tailored to the travel retail spirits segment.
Regular meetings between Bacardi's brand managers and our design and duty-free innovation teams ensured that all parties remained aligned on upcoming activations and aware of the creative assets in play. These sessions reviewed design concepts and the application of heritage materials, ensuring consistency in brand implementation. One notable example was the activation at Heathrow Terminal 5 in London, part of a larger global effort by our team to implement Bacardi’s brand assets across various airports worldwide.
Historical Context:
The iconic BACARDI rum Bat Device is one of the most recognizable logos in the world, with deep ties to the brand’s heritage. Its origin dates back to Don Facundo’s first distillery, where a colony of fruit bats hung from the rafters. The bat, revered as a symbol of health, good fortune, and family unity by both Spanish and Cuban cultures, inspired his wife, Doña Amalia, to suggest using a bat symbol to represent the rum.
In an era when literacy rates were low, the Bat Device served as a distinguishing mark, making Bacardi rum easily recognizable. The people of Cuba soon referred to it as el Ron del Murciélago or “the Rum of the Bat.” Today, the Bat Device remains a proud emblem on every bottle of BACARDI rum and is acknowledged as one of the most recognizable trademarks in the global spirits industry.
The BACARDI rum Bat Device
One of the most recognizable logos in the world has an important connection to Bacardi. A colony of fruit bats hung from the rafters of Don Facundo's first distillery and remains today as
a symbol of health, good fortune and family
unity, a belief also shared by the
native people of Cuba.
