My take on the Absolut Kindness campaign

I’ve always loved Absolut Vodka’s versatile advertising, and I have written about the brand on a couple of occasions in the past.

When I found out about Absolut’s latest hybrid advertising, offline PR and social media campaign, I had to check it out!

According to the Absolut Kindness website, in an Absolut World, currency would be replaced by acts of kindness; call me cynical, but money makes the world go round! (which is incidentally the lyrics of the soundtrack they used for their commercial).

From a marketing point of view, the campaign didn’t do much for me for the following reasons:
- Advertising: I find the advert a little a soppy and too Americanised. As someone ironically commented on YouTube, ‘this ad is fully encouraging the spread of swine flu’
- Offline PR: I went to Graphic Bar in Soho (lovely bar!) and despite the ‘high five the barman to get a free drink’ posters in the bar, some people still failed to get the message. We did however have fun paying for our drinks with acts of kindness
- Social Media: I was a little disappointed by their so-called social media strategy which only included a Twitter Feed. I would have loved to see a Facebook page as a central hub to upload photos, update fans, and maybe videos of the different events across London they could have added onto their YouTube channel (think T-Mobile).

Did you take part in the #kindness movement? What were your thoughts?

More photos of the event on my Flickr stream