Bombay Sapphire's 2021 'Senses Stirred' campaign, created by BBDO and directed by Alan Masferrer, visualised the sensations of a Bombay and Tonic across US
How Bombay Sapphire Turned a Gin and Tonic Into a Sensory Experience
Bombay Sapphire's "Senses Stirred" campaign is a 2021 integrated advertising effort created by BBDO and directed by Alan Masferrer, launched in the United States on August 9, 2021, designed to visualise the sensory experience of drinking a Bombay and Tonic through artistic film and multi-channel media.
The campaign positions Bombay Sapphire not merely as a gin brand but as a catalyst for creative inspiration and mindful pleasure. Its core proposition — distilled into the phrase "Be Brilliant and Inspired" — invites consumers to engage with the act of drinking as a sensory and lifestyle ritual rather than a transactional one. In the United States, where premiumisation of spirits has reshaped consumer expectations across the gin, beer, and wine categories alike, this framing carries strategic weight. The campaign speaks directly to an audience seeking sophistication and meaning in their choices of alcoholic drinks.
Produced by Landia and supported by media agency OMD, "Senses Stirred" ran across network and cable television, digital platforms, social media, on-premise venues, e-commerce environments, and real-world experiential activations. Three film formats — 30-second, 15-second, and 6-second cuts — gave the campaign the flexibility to reach consumers across every stage of the purchase funnel, from broad awareness on linear television to precise retargeting in digital environments. The campaign was scheduled to run through March 2022, with planned geographic expansion into the United Kingdom and Germany later in 2021, as reported by The Drinks Business. Clapboard's editorial team rates the campaign 63 out of 100.
Bombay Sapphire entered the "Senses Stirred" campaign at a moment of accelerating momentum in the global gin category. Global gin volume reached 96.6 million nine-litre cases in 2021, representing annual volume growth of 9.5% that year, according to The Spirits Business. In the United States, premiumisation across spirits, wine, and beer categories had conditioned consumers to expect more from lifestyle and food and drink brands — not just quality in the glass but meaning in the narrative surrounding the product.
The strategic insight animating "Senses Stirred" is that gin consumption, particularly the Bombay and Tonic serve, is an inherently sensory act — the botanicals, the effervescence, the clarity of the glass — and that this sensory dimension had been largely underexplored in mainstream gin advertising. By commissioning BBDO to visualise those sensations rather than simply describe them, Bombay Sapphire staked out creative territory that its principal competitors had not occupied. Gordon's, which held 7.7% of global gin volume in 2021 with 11.2% volume growth according to The Spirits Business, and Tanqueray, which held 5.8 million nine-litre cases in the same period per The Spirits Business, both pursued more conventional lifestyle-led advertising. Bombay Sapphire's sensory-art positioning offered a meaningful point of differentiation in a crowded premium spirits shelf.
The integrated channel strategy — spanning television, digital, social, on-premise, and experiential in the United States — also reflects a studied understanding of how premium spirits consumers move between environments, from discovery on connected television to consideration at the bar and conversion through e-commerce. OMD's media planning ensured that the campaign's visual language remained coherent across all these touchpoints, reinforcing the brand's identity as a premium, inspiration-driven gin at each moment of contact.
Director Alan Masferrer led the creative realisation of "Senses Stirred" for Bombay Sapphire, working with production company Landia under the creative direction of BBDO. Masferrer brought a particular aesthetic sensibility to the project, having stated publicly his affinity for the Bombay and Tonic serve as a subject — an alignment between personal taste and professional assignment that is evident in the campaign's intimate, tactile visual language, as documented on his portfolio at cargocollective.com. Director of photography Mauro Chiarello captured the imagery, with Landia's Managing Partner and Executive Producer Juan Taylor overseeing production.
The creative approach treats the gin itself as an art object. The Spirits Business described the advertisements as resembling artistic installations, deploying imagery of ice, glass, and botanical-garden elements to evoke the sensory experience of the drink rather than simply show it being consumed. This is a deliberate inversion of conventional food and drink advertising logic, which typically centres the product in a social context. Here, the social context is implied through sensation rather than scenario, asking viewers to project themselves into a feeling rather than a situation.
Three film durations — 30 seconds, 15 seconds, and 6 seconds — were produced, each calibrated to the attention environment of its intended platform. The 30-second cut carried the full sensory narrative arc; the shorter formats isolated the most viscerally arresting imagery for social and pre-roll environments. This format discipline, a hallmark of well-resourced integrated campaigns, ensured that no matter where a consumer encountered Bombay Sapphire's "Senses Stirred" creative in the United States, the brand impression was consistent and complete.
Bombay Sapphire's "Senses Stirred" generated measurable audience engagement following its August 2021 launch in the United States. The campaign archive records 62,402 views and 632 likes on the submitted asset, figures that reflect the reach of the creative beyond its paid media environments and into the professional advertising community. The Drum covered the campaign positively on October 13, 2021, providing editorial validation that extended the campaign's earned media footprint, as reported by The Drum.
No independently verified sales or market-share data attributable specifically to "Senses Stirred" is publicly available for the campaign's US run. However, the structural effectiveness of the campaign is legible from its architecture. An integrated deployment across network and cable television, digital, social, on-premise, and experiential channels in the United States — sustained through March 2022 and supported by planned influencer and experiential extensions per The Drum — gave the brand sustained presence across the full consumer journey in a high-consideration category. The planned expansion into the United Kingdom and Germany, reported by The Drinks Business, further signals that Bombay Sapphire and its parent company Bacardi regarded the campaign's early performance as sufficient warrant for international rollout.
The campaign's sensory-art creative register also gave it a quality of memorability that transactional gin advertising rarely achieves. In a spirits landscape where Gordon's and Tanqueray compete aggressively for premium positioning, the distinctiveness of Bombay Sapphire's visual language in "Senses Stirred" represents a durable brand asset that operates beyond the campaign's scheduled media window. Clapboard scores the campaign 63 out of 100, reflecting competent integrated execution and a differentiated creative concept tempered by limited publicly verifiable performance data.
"Senses Stirred" is a 2021 integrated advertising campaign for Bombay Sapphire created by BBDO and directed by Alan Masferrer. Launched in the United States on August 9, 2021, it visualised the sensory experience of a Bombay and Tonic through artistic film, running across television, digital, social, and experiential channels through March 2022.
BBDO created "Senses Stirred" for Bombay Sapphire. Media planning was handled by OMD, production was carried out by Landia, and director Alan Masferrer led the film's creative realisation alongside director of photography Mauro Chiarello, with Landia's Juan Taylor serving as Managing Partner and Executive Producer.
"Senses Stirred" launched in the United States on August 9, 2021. It ran across network and cable television, digital platforms, social media, on-premise venues, and e-commerce environments, with experiential activations also planned. The campaign was scheduled to continue through March 2022, as reported by The Drum.
"Senses Stirred" positions Bombay Sapphire as a sensory and creative catalyst rather than a conventional lifestyle gin. Where Gordon's and Tanqueray pursued more straightforward lifestyle advertising in 2021, Bombay Sapphire used artistic, installation-style imagery to occupy distinct creative territory in the premium United States gin market.
Three film formats were produced for "Senses Stirred": 30-second, 15-second, and 6-second versions. Each format was calibrated to its intended platform environment, allowing the campaign to maintain a coherent brand impression across broadcast television, digital pre-roll, and social media channels throughout the United States.
Bombay Sapphire's "Senses Stirred" receives a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100. The score reflects a differentiated sensory creative concept and a well-structured integrated media deployment across the United States, moderated by the limited amount of publicly verifiable campaign performance data available for independent assessment.
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