Digiday Publishing Summit:

Connect with execs from The New York Times, TIME, Dotdash Meredith and many more

SECURE YOUR SEAT

Bacardi tests IGTV by getting users to participate in video creation

Within a week of Instagram launching IGTV, its YouTube-like section for long videos, companies including Chipotle, Netflix, Nike and Everlane have begun testing it with original video or repurposed Instagram Stories.

In a twist, Bacardi is merging user participation in Instagram Stories with IGTV. The rum maker is putting a sponsored music video on IGTV that will be directed by people’s votes in polls within Instagram Stories.

The music video will feature the dancing duo Les Twins, who have 970,000 followers on Instagram at @OfficialLesTwins. Starting at 1 p.m. ET on June 29, @OfficialLesTwins will begin posting Instagram Stories asking followers to vote on elements of the video, such as choreography, lighting, camera angles and even the length of the video. Based on followers’ choices, Les Twins could take their moves from a New York City subway all the way to Coney Island, so the music video could easily span an hour. The results will be incorporated into Les Twins’ next Instagram Story, and the final version will be posted to Bacardi’s and Les Twins’ IGTV channels at noon the following day.

Laila Mignoni, director of creative excellence for Bacardi, took the interactive approach to draw attention to the company’s new IGTV channel and chose influencers because they already have followings there. Bacardi saw more room to be creative and get more viewer response with IGTV’s long format.

“A lot of social platforms only allow you to only communicate with such short clips,” said Mignoni. “That has been a frustration at times. Platforms dictating how a story should be told because of the length is a downer. We need both — the short and longer formats where you can land emotions in narratives.”

The effort, created with agency BBDO, is part of Bacardi’s yearlong Do What Moves You campaign, which aims to inspire consumers to live expressively, and is also supported by Bacardi sponsorship of music festivals and its Dance Floor digital ad launched in May and promoted on social channels, music streaming sites like Spotify and SoundCloud and music publications like Fader and Stereogum.

Get more exclusive coverage and analysis around the future of video, TV and entertainment by subscribing to the weekly video briefing email.

https://digiday.com/?p=293385

More in Marketing

Illustration of a social media post with hearts, showing a chat bubble with a dollar sign, purse, and shoe, representing how creators use automated marketing tools to monetize content.

In Graphic Detail: Inside the state of the creator economy industrial complex

The creator economy might have started out as an alternative to traditional media, but is becoming more and more like it as it professionalizes.

Shopify has quietly set boundaries for ‘buy-for-me’ AI bots on merchant sites

The change comes at a time when major retailers like Amazon and Walmart are leaning into agentic AI.

WTF is ‘Google Zero’?

The era of “Google Zero” — industry shorthand for a world where Google keeps users inside its own walls — is here.