• by Amy Corr , Staff Writer @MediaPostOTL, April 19, 2010

HPNOTIQ, the blue liqueur made of vodka, natural tropical fruit juices and cognac, launched a unique online campaign targeting 21-34 year-old women planning get-togethers.

In the process, the company became the first sponsor of a sharable Evite widget, paving the road for a new ad medium for the invitation-sending Web site.

The Hauser Group created HPNOTIQ's campaign on Evite.com, which featured the sponsored widget, an event invitation template and interactive banner ads.

The HPNOTIQ-branded event invitation template contained pop-up recipes for five HPNOTIQ drink mixes, while rich-media banner ads, driving users to HPNOTIQ.com, matched women with the best HPNOTIQ cocktail based on clothing preferences, among other traits.

The brand's goal was to position itself as the perfect drink for a girls' night out.

The widget was a smart marketing tool because it can be shared on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Friendster, serving as a real-time event countdown that's emblazoned with HPNOTIQ's brand identity.

The campaign took the Hauser Group three months to create, one month to produce and stayed active for five months.

"When building this first-ever countdown clock widget and invite for Evite, we worked through a few technical programming issues to ensure its exportability to social networks like Facebook and MySpace," said John Padgett, vice president/media director of Hauser Group.

"The Evite/IAC group was highly collaborative in working out the kinks, and the HPNOTIQ invite was an overnight success as hosts selected it as their invite of choice, and then further spread its use and visibility by posting it to other social sites," concluded Padgett.