Case Study
Espresso Martini: cultural landscape AnALYSIS
A Cultural Landscape
In partnership with Brandwatch, a leading AI-enabled social listening tool.
What is a cultural landscape?
Brands don't "tap into" culture; they participate. They respond to needs with an innovative solution. Ultimately, to be culturally relevant is to view campaigns as services for the brand audience.
The cultural landscape is a map of the forces behind a trend, revealing the unmet need driving interest and how brands should respond.
the Challenge
A major alcohol brand needed to regain relevance in a shrinking category. While overall drinking was declining, the espresso martini was exploding: double-digit sales growth.
The brand sought a way to enter this world without pretending to own it
The Approach
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Tracking conversations and audience behavior to understand what occasions, people, and needs define interest.
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Identifying cultural signals that reveal trends and territories. Behind every territory, there is a unified driver and need.
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Identifying a clear need that a brand can meet to enter the cultural category in an organic way.
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Ensuring feasibility through collaboration with PR and creative partners.
The Process
2+ years’ worth of data | 10M+ mentions | All major platforms, including Instagram, X/Twitter, Reddit, TikTok.
Two years of social data revealed emerging forces likely to continue growing over the next year. This gave the brand just the right amount of time to bring the idea to life.
The work focused on “hunting” for category needs, tracking them across occasions, moods, and modes of consumption. Social listening revealed which occasions, people, and needs define interest. Unmet needs became entry points for the brand.
To ensure the brand message resonated, we conducted semiotic analysis to expose the cultural signals behind trends and territories. Behind every territory, there is one unified driver and need. PR and creative partners participated in an innovation workshop to ensure the feasibility of each idea.
The Insight
Gen Z needs social permission to break a rule. You can’t drink coffee after 4 p.m., but the espresso martini is a night drink, not a brunch item. Exploring social mentions showed that nighttime conversations were twice as frequent as daytime mentions. A clear role for the brand emerged: to be a role model of mischievous behavior.
The Impact
By decoding the real cultural meaning of the espresso martini, the brand gained a clear, credible route into a new night ritual. The strategy centered on relevance, not dominance, participating in a cultural phenomenon without distorting it.