- Canadian Club - Hide a Case

After gaining the Canadian Club business back in 2008, we were tasked with developing a campaign that would re-ignite the brand and remind the World that Canadian Club whisky is the spirit of adventure.

We flew out to Canada and spent a few days in the beautiful Canadian Club heritage centre in Windsor, rifling through the archives to try and gain a deeper understanding of Canadian Club. The brand has a wonderfully rich history; prohibition, bootleggers, there is even a bullet hole in the wall of their speakeasy said to have been fired by the infamous Al Capone! However, it was the Hide A Case campaign back in the 1960s that really struck a chord.

25 cases of Canadian Club were hidden in some of the most adventurous locations across the globe, including the North Pole, Death Valley and the very top of Mt. Kilimanjaro! CC ran a series of press ads detailing each location and challenging consumers to find the cases in return for a trip around the World. Not in their wildest dreams did they ever imagine that anyone would actually go and look, but sure enough 16 of the cases were eventually found, and the campaign became a huge success. But whatever happened to the cases that were still missing?

In 2010 we revived the famous Hide A Case campaign, with a modern twist. Using banner ads, billboards, social media and guerrilla marketing techniques, American and Canadian consumers were enticed into joining the Hide A Case adventure. Over 23,000 potential adventurers signed up and participated in a series of tasks carried out online over 6 weeks. Those that succeeded in the tasks were entered into round 2 where they uploaded videos explaining why they should go on the adventure. Thousands of Hide A Case fans and consumers voted for their favourites online and the 8 lucky winners joined us in the hunt for one of Canadian Clubs missing cases…

The winners were divided into 2 teams: 4 Americans and 4 Canadians. They competed in a series of tough challenges during a week of adventure that started in Canada, travelled through New Zealand and ended up on a remote island in Tonga! Thousands tuned in to the Hide A Case website as we showed footage of the adventure of a lifetime, culminating in one winner, Kristina Beall, reaching the location of the lost case and bagging the $100k prize money!