• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, August 22, 2007

Bacardi reports that its interactive marketing campaign touting mojitos, a popular lime-flavored cocktail from Cuba, got a positive response from bar patrons. The campaign, which launched June 2 on 3,900 Ecast touchscreen installations nationally, saw a 13% click-through rate--the number of patrons who continued interacting with the Ecast display to look at the Bacardi mini-site, after their music choice was finished.

The Ecast installations are essentially interactive jukeboxes with a digital display, which allow bar patrons to choose music and view marketing messages, including text and images delivered during the song, and audio messages after the song is over. In the Bacardi campaign, users could learn about recipes, watch an amusing commercial and ogle a "Bacardi Girls" photo shoot.

Shauna Lotz of Universal McCann, which engineered the campaign, remarked: "Ecast helped us speak to active and outgoing consumers at the point-of-sale, where our message resonates. It's an ideal fit for us, and the response rates are now validating our initial assumptions."

The campaign is running in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, the Bay Area, Dallas, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Cleveland, Miami, and Denver, among other cities.

Recently, researchers have described a number of special attributes of bars, and bar-goers, that make them attractive venues for marketing.

In March, Arbitron released a study which found 50% of American adults over the age of 21 had visited a bar within the last month--about 105 million people. Moreover, 31%--or 65 million people--had been to a bar in the last week. According to Arbitron, they include a higher percentage of self-described "early adopters" than the population at large. Some 27% of monthly bar-goers consider themselves "early adopters," versus 18% generally--while 26% say they frequently recommend new products to friends, compared to 19% overall.

Another study from Arbitron, performed for Ecast, found that bar-goers had a 43% recall for advertising delivered via Ecast. Arbitron's study canvassed bar patrons in New York, Seattle and Columbus, Ohio, in the summer of 2006.