• by Aaron Baar , July 11, 2016

Add cocktailing to the list of things that have now become “extreme.” Stoli Vodka has launched a summer digital marketing campaign featuring four extreme athletes mixing drinks in original and daring ways. 

The new effort, “Drink What You Want,” is designed to appeal to Millennial men, who (according to company research) are prone to avoid ordering flavored cocktails in public for fear of scrutiny from their friends. 

“Ultimately, we believe the world should be free of stereotypes and superficiality,” Russell Pareti, brand director at Stoli Group USA, tells Marketing Daily. “We felt that by featuring the best extreme sports athletes, we would have a unique way of bring together two passion points for this audience.”

The videos use the extreme sports — bull riding, mountain biking, kayaking and slackline-walking —  to mix the cocktails after the ingredients have been added to a shaker. (Mountain biker Kyle Norraten, for instance, puts the shaker in his water carriage before heading to the trail.)

“We tried to find sports or positions where they would be shaking the cocktails,” Pareti says. The videos all end with the athletes pouring the cocktails into the appropriate serving container — glass, jar, copper mug, etc. — and encouraging consumers to “Drink what you want.”

The videos will be posted on YouTube and at DrinkWhatYouWant.com through the summer. The digital-first approach is meant to attract the Millennial target, while maintaining the 80-year-old brand’s history of firsts and innovation, Pareti says. “When you’re an older brand, you need to make sure you’re being relevant,” he says. 

Stoli is also letting consumers get into the act, encouraging them to post photos of them drinking mixed cocktails on Instagram with the Hashtag #DrinkWhatYouWant. “We wanted to give consumers a place where they could celebrate [drinking mixed cocktails],” Pareti says.