Diageo aimed to modernise Captain Morgan's relevance with Gen-Z consumers, as it faced ever-growing competition from more culturally aligned spirits brands. While beloved and hugely well-known, the brand was hampered by somewhat outdated perceptions that limited its appeal. The challenge was to craft a campaign that not only introduced the product, but also established Captain Morgan as a dynamic and credible player in the lives of young people.

For the UK’s youth, house parties and corner shops are essential pillars of their social life. House parties embody the freedom and connection of youth culture, while corner shops are indispensable enablers of the party in every city. We saw an opportunity to merge these two worlds into a single, unexpected cultural moment.

Over three memorable nights, we transformed Shoreditch’s Kachette into an immersive hybrid of corner shop and house party, where guests entered through a hyper-realistic store stocked with store-cupboard staples, fruit, snacks, branded merchandise, and samples of the new RTD, alongside the full range of Captain Morgan products.

Personalisation stations and exclusive merchandise added an interactive and collectible element to the experience. Beyond the event, we distributed 15,000 cans through a local network of convenience stores within a mile radius of the venue, making the product accessible to the local community whilst extending the campaign’s reach.

Behind a secret fridge door, attendees discovered a party space totally reimagined as a home, complete with accurate recreations of a bathroom, living room and kitchen, which also doubled up as the DJ booth and encompassed performances by UK underground heroes, including Badger and Interplanetary Criminal. Partnerships with UK-based labels ec2a and Pull Up Recordings lent significant credibility to the line-up, while a covert fly-posting campaign and additional unannounced artists built anticipation, with huge queues of hopeful attendees seen down the street each night.

Drawing 2,625 guests across three sold-out nights, garnered from only 48 hours of pre-promotion, the campaign successfully caught the imagination whilst building huge amounts of hype and awareness amongst Captain’s target audience. A total of 21,000 RTD cans were sampled, whilst digital and social channels generated over 8.8 million organic impressions, helping amplify the campaign’s impact far beyond the venue.

By blending these two key elements of everyday youth life — the house party and the corner shop — we delivered a campaign that was unique, innovative, and authentic - creating not only a product launch, but an unexpected cultural statement that kicked off the process of reestablishing Captain Morgan’s salience and credibility among youth audiences.

Watch the full campaign wrap-up video below.