Drinking up the best beverage Web site


www.BACARDI.com is the place to meet partypeople worldwide. Fresh party updates from all over the world, a state-of the-art DJ mixing console, cocktails to enjoy and to go, community communication tools and naturally – everything you ever wanted to know about the world’s most popular fine rums. Pure flash, pure spirit, pure entertainment!
And naturally – for grown-up’s only.

Contents are arranged around the brand’s grown competences. Drinks, Music and people coming together to party and have a good time. Far away from secluded islands BACARDI happens now and in the middle of a young urban lifestyle. But even though the surrounding might have changed - the feeling still is totally BACARDI.

BACARDI.com is an achievement because it encapsulates nearly all available web technologies in one seamless branded presentation. The core hurdles revolved around the fact that BACARDI.com had to be extremely "dynamic". The site had to be launched in 11 different languages (including two that are Cyrillic), and be easily maintainable. The site also had to be very multimedia heavy without requiring the user to have a T1 for bandwidth. To ensure maximum brand appeal Macromedia Flash technology has been used for the frontend design.

To solve the dynamic aspects and the need for multiple languages and to allow frequent and fast content updates the site is completely data driven and administrable via a Web Browser interface. An entire XML messaging system had to be developed to allow the Flash movies to communicate with the database. Most of the content, even images, is stored in the backend database.

Because of the amount of dynamic content the site was designed to be very modular. Rather than requiring a user to download the entire BACARDI.com flash movie in one huge download, BACARDI.com delivers flash "modules" depending on what portion of the site is actually visited. For instance if you never visit the "Learn" section, you'll never have to download the "Learn" flash modules speeding your movement through BACARDI.com. Anyway – for a really slowly connected user also an HTML version is provided in many languages.

The site is completely build on Microsoft .Net 2003 technology and using SQLServer as database. A loadbalanced system ensures failsafe availability and high performance. backend modules are capsuled as small application classes (.Net assemblies) and thereby enable speedy implementation – may it be eCards, galleries with image upload possibilities, user polls, music sampling engines, mobile features like SMS and tout- and banner management – BACARDI.com uses their own individually designed advanced application pool to outstand from competititors. Enterprise applications like Communigate Pro mailserver are connected to frontend flash applications like the BATClub community and offer individual bat-mail.com accounts for BACARDI fans.

BACARDI.com is a truly global brandsite but also offers many opportunities for local markets to offer their individual promotional contents and communicate corresponding events. Each market can have their own homepage flash billboards and videos and event calendar as well as the possibility to activate individual touts that extend the global content by external promotional microsites and local brandsites via Web-CMS administration. Thereby the brand experience for an individual local user always stays very close to the local communication strategy and the site can be adapted very easily to offline advertising strategies. This does not only increase the brand impact but also prolonges the sites lifecycle.

Besides these options to fit the site to the local markets needs & campaigns, www.bacardi.com also serves as a gateway into the different sub-brandsites like www.bacardi8.com, www.bacardi-breezer.com, www.bacardi-limon.com and others more – each representing a unique brand personality for a selected target group and each carrying the spirit of BACARDI in each pixel.


Awards for www.bacardi.com:
- Finalist Andy Awards, New York
- Shortlist Cannes Cyber Lions, Cannes
- FAB Award Alcoholic Beverages, FABulous Award Multimedia, London
- Best Beverage Website, WebAward
- Finalist London International Advertising and Design Awards, London
- Bronze World Medal New York Festivals, New York



 

 

 

 

 

 

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