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Bacardi and Major Lazer Turned Snapchat Into a Music Video in 2017
The Bacardi Major Lazer Snapchat Lens campaign, created by BBDO New York and launched in the United States in June 2017, placed users inside an augmented reality music-video experience built around Major Lazer's track "Front of the Line," inviting them to submit their Snaps for inclusion in a fan-created three-minute music video.
The campaign launched on June 22, 2017, and ran for five days through June 26. Two custom Snapchat Lenses were available in-app for 24-hour windows, after which users could unlock them through Snapcodes distributed across Bacardi's Facebook and Instagram channels. The mechanic transformed a standard sponsored lens into an ongoing, cross-platform participation loop, extending its reach well beyond the initial in-app window. Major Lazer's involvement was not incidental. The electronic music collective served as a cultural partner within Bacardi's year-long "Sound of Rum" collaboration, which had launched in January 2017, giving the Snapchat activation a narrative context rather than treating it as a standalone stunt.
The campaign operated in the United States Food and Drink category, specifically within alcoholic drinks advertising, at a moment when spirits brands were actively competing for the attention of legal-drinking-age millennials on social platforms. Bacardi and BBDO New York built the experience with production company North Kingdom, whose technical team engineered the augmented reality layer that placed users visually inside a stylised music environment. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 58 out of 100, reflecting meaningful innovation in format and participation design against a category that was still early in its adoption of AR-driven social experiences.
Bacardi entered 2017 facing measurable volume pressure in a competitive global spirits landscape. According to The Spirits Business, Bacardi sold approximately 16.8 million nine-liter cases in 2017, down from 17.2 million in 2016, a decline of roughly 2.7%. The brand remained the second-largest rum brand globally, per The Spirits Business, but that position required active defence against category rivals backed by larger parent companies.
Diageo, which held approximately 20% of global distilled-spirits-company sales in 2016 according to The Spirits Business, owns Captain Morgan, a direct rum competitor with substantial marketing budgets and distribution reach. Pernod Ricard, also identified by The Spirits Business as holding close to 9.7% of global distilled-spirits-company sales in the same period, represents a second tier of institutional competition that Bacardi, as a privately held company under Bacardi Limited, navigates without the structural advantages of a publicly traded conglomerate.
The strategic rationale for investing in a Snapchat Lens rather than conventional digital advertising rested on a clear consumer insight: younger legal-drinking-age audiences in the United States were spending significant time inside camera-first social platforms, and passive branded content was losing share of attention to participatory formats. By anchoring the lens to Major Lazer, a culturally credible act with demonstrated global reach, BBDO New York gave the activation a reason to exist beyond the brand brief. The "Sound of Rum" partnership, reported by The Drum, provided structural legitimacy — the Snapchat moment was chapter and verse in a longer brand-artist narrative rather than an opportunistic co-sign. That coherence between strategy and execution is precisely what separated this campaign from the many sponsored lenses that generated brief novelty without sustained engagement.
North Kingdom handled the production of the augmented reality experience, with technical leads Magnus Ostergren, Felix Hill, and Daniel Isaksson engineering the lens mechanics that placed users inside a stylised visual environment drawn from Major Lazer's aesthetic. Animator Mathias Lindgren was credited with the motion design work that made the in-lens world feel kinetic rather than static. The creative direction came from executive creative directors Danilo Boer and Marcos Kotlhar at BBDO New York, working under chief creative officers David Lubars and Greg Hahn.
Art directors Marcus Johnston and Pedro Sampaio and copywriters Jim Connolly and Kathryn Kvas shaped the campaign's visual and verbal identity, while agency producers James Young and Sho Matsuzaki managed the production pipeline between BBDO New York and North Kingdom. Executive producers Frida Hellden and Nina Amjadi oversaw delivery on the production company side. The music and sound credit belongs to Major Lazer featuring Machel Montano, whose track "Front of the Line" provided the sonic backbone of the lens experience.
The two lenses were engineered to work within Snapchat's native camera environment, requiring no external app download or redirection. Users who encountered the experience within the app's 24-hour availability window could later retrieve it via Snapcodes seeded to Bacardi's Facebook and Instagram pages, a cross-platform distribution decision that reflects deliberate thinking about how branded AR content loses value when it disappears entirely after a single day. The fan submission mechanic — allowing users to contribute their Snaps toward a collaboratively assembled three-minute music video — transformed individual moments of play into collective creative output, a structural choice that gave users a material reason to engage beyond passive viewing. Per The One Club, The One Show recognised the campaign with a Merit in Use of Technology and Augmented Reality in 2018, with Annual ID OS_MO18056M.
No verified data for sales lift or market-share change resulting from the Bacardi Major Lazer Snapchat Lens campaign is publicly available. The performance record that does exist is, however, substantive. According to oneclub.org, the campaign generated more than 42 million lens plays and 29 years of cumulative playing time. The same source records 50 million earned-media impressions and a 510% increase in average engagement time relative to benchmark.
Those figures, taken together, describe a campaign that succeeded on the specific terms it was designed to meet. A 510% lift in average engagement time, as reported by oneclub.org, is not incidental; it reflects the structural consequence of a participation mechanic that gave users something to do rather than something to watch. Forty-two million lens plays across a five-day window in the United States, with a submission mechanic that incentivised repeat use, points to a distribution architecture that worked: 24-hour in-app availability followed by Snapcode unlocking across Facebook and Instagram extended the campaign's active life without diluting the scarcity logic that drove initial urgency.
The One Show Merit in Use of Technology and Augmented Reality, confirmed by oneclub.org, provides independent creative validation. A Caples Silver award has been mentioned in portfolio documentation but lacks sufficient independent verification to cite with confidence. The campaign's structural effectiveness — combining cultural credibility through Major Lazer, platform-native AR mechanics, and cross-platform longevity — demonstrates a model for alcoholic drinks advertising in the United States that the category was only beginning to explore in 2017.
The Bacardi Major Lazer Snapchat Lens campaign was an augmented reality activation launched in the United States in June 2017. Created by BBDO New York and North Kingdom, it placed users inside a music-video world built around Major Lazer's track "Front of the Line" and invited them to submit Snaps for a fan-assembled music video.
The campaign generated more than 42 million lens plays, according to oneclub.org. It also accumulated 29 years of cumulative playing time and 50 million earned-media impressions, alongside a 510% increase in average engagement time compared to benchmark performance for comparable Snapchat activations.
BBDO New York created the campaign, working with production company North Kingdom on the augmented reality build. Chief creative officers David Lubars and Greg Hahn led the agency side, with executive creative directors Danilo Boer and Marcos Kotlhar overseeing the creative work that defined the lens experience.
The One Show awarded the campaign a Merit in Use of Technology and Augmented Reality in 2018, confirmed by oneclub.org under Annual ID OS_MO18056M. A Caples Silver award has appeared in portfolio documentation but lacks sufficient independent verification to confirm the specific category or year of that recognition.
Bacardi distributed Snapcodes across its Facebook and Instagram channels after each lens's 24-hour in-app availability period ended. This cross-platform unlocking mechanic allowed users who missed the initial window to access the augmented reality experience, extending the campaign's active reach across multiple social platforms.
Major Lazer served as Bacardi's cultural partner within the year-long "Sound of Rum" collaboration launched in January 2017, as reported by The Drum. The Snapchat activation was one chapter in that sustained partnership, giving the AR campaign narrative context rather than positioning it as an isolated branded technology stunt.
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