• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, December 22, 2015

In an elaborate but fairly subtle campaign promoting the Mount Gay Rum Old Fashioned to young adults, the spirits brand has created an interview series offering a peek into the minds of pioneering creatives.

The connection: The brand's old-fashioned cocktail recipe calls for "five essential ingredients," and each of the 11 interviewees was asked to discuss on camera the "five essential pieces" or ideas at the core of their work and their lives.

Fashion designer Vivienne Westwood (shown), for example, discusses being an activist and the importance of real-life experiences as being among her five essentials.

Other interviewees include Alex Wiederin, executive design director of Town & Country and founder of Buero New York; model and artist Christina Kruse; James Ramsey, president of the RAAD architecture/design firm and creator of the Lowline park proposal for New York City; interior designers Nahila Chianale and Robert Stilin; filmmaker and journalist Vikram Gandhi; Ssion artist and musician Cody Critcheloe; singer/songwriter Roisin Murphy; artist and actress India Salvor Menue; and creative director and artist Babak Radboy.

Those videos — which include no outright promotion of Mount Gay or the cocktail, other than the brand's logo appearing on the intro screen for each (above left) — are hosted on Mount Gay's YouTube channel, along with a separate video showing the "five essential  pieces" of a Mount Gay Rum Old Fashioned. 

The videos, which end with the on-screen statement "Be Confident. Drink Responsibly," are also being released and promoted one at a time on the brand's Instagram and Facebook pages.

"This is a 'quality, not quantity' approach for Mount Gay," says Paul Sevigny, managing partner of Naked Communications, which created the videos. "The work links Mount Gay’s 300-plus years of tradition and originality to individuals who are truly original. Tradition and craft are more important today than ever before with this consumer group, and Mount Gay is the original craft spirit."

In addition, the campaign included a live auction event on Dec. 14 organized by auction platform Hasbeens & Willbees, which also helped produce the video series.

The event auctioned off five consigned pieces of art, furniture and other items from each of the video subjects, as well as from more than 20 other creative thought leaders and featured a live auction of consigned items selected by more than two dozen curators -- held at the Robert Miller Gallery this past Monday (Dec. 14). The auction was titled "5 Easy Pieces" (after the Jack Nicholson film of the same name), as each curator selected five pieces to be auctioned off — from antique furniture to hand-drawn works of art. Here's a link to some of the items that were sold that evening.