Hennessy V.S Major, created by Droga5 in April 2018, revives the story of cycling champion Marshall Taylor in the fifth chapter of the Wild Rabbit platform.
ARCHIVEHennessy V.S Major Brings Marshall Taylor's Legacy to Life
Hennessy V.S Major is a 2018 integrated film campaign created by Droga5 for Hennessy in the United States, dramatising the life of African American cycling champion Marshall "Major" Taylor as the fifth chapter of the brand's ongoing Wild Rabbit platform, with a 90-second film narrated by Nas and directed by Derek Cianfrance.
Hennessy commissioned the campaign during summer 2017. According to Ruben Mercadal, Associate Director of Film Production at Droga5, Hennessy tasked the agency with producing a 2018 instalment of its "What's Your Wild Rabbit?" campaign, celebrating extraordinary individuals pushing their potential. That brief became Major — a film centred on Marshall Taylor, a world champion cyclist who overcame systematic racial barriers in late nineteenth-century America to become one of the most accomplished athletes of his era.
The campaign was publicly reported on April 12, 2018, as noted by The Drum, and the film first broadcast on April 14, 2018, according to multivu.com. Hennessy formally announced the campaign on April 16, 2018, per multivu.com. The integrated campaign was scheduled to run across social, mobile, desktop, and television throughout 2018, according to Little Black Book, making it one of the brand's most broadly distributed Wild Rabbit chapters to date.
In the United States, Major extended a platform that had been running since 2012 and had consistently targeted younger African American and Hispanic men who defined success through personal drive rather than financial status, per observer.com. The campaign carried the platform's foundational tagline, "Never stop. Never settle." — a line that finds particular resonance in Taylor's biography, given the obstacles he faced and the records he nonetheless set.
Hennessy holds a structurally dominant position in the United States cognac market. The brand commanded more than 60% of the US cognac market, according to thespiritsbusiness.com, in a category that reached 6.1 million nine-litre cases in 2018, up 6.5% year over year, making the United States the largest national cognac market in the world, per Blog Cognac-Expert. Against that backdrop, maintaining cultural relevance among younger consumers — not simply category volume — was the strategic imperative driving Wild Rabbit.
Droga5 won the Hennessy creative account in April 2011, according to clapboard.com, and launched the Wild Rabbit platform in 2012. The platform's consistent strategic logic, as reported by observer.com, was to reach younger African American and Hispanic men who measured ambition through personal achievement rather than conspicuous wealth. Marshall Taylor's biography serves that logic precisely: a man who competed, won, and endured without institutional support, whose name had been largely erased from mainstream cultural memory.
In the competitive landscape of premium spirits advertising in the United States, Hennessy faced sustained pressure from brands including Rémy Martin and Courvoisier, both of which have pursued similar cultural positioning with African American consumers. Hennessy's decision to ground Major in a verifiable, emotionally specific historical figure, rather than abstract aspiration, sharpened the brand's differentiation. Nas, described as a long-time Hennessy partner by multivu.com, provided the voiceover, lending the film an authenticity rooted in lived cultural proximity rather than celebrity endorsement alone. The combination of a Black cycling champion, a hip-hop artist narrator, and a director known for emotionally demanding cinema gave Major an unusually coherent creative rationale for a spirits campaign.
Derek Cianfrance directed the Major film for Hennessy through Radical Media. Cianfrance, known for emotionally immersive dramatic work, brought a cinematic register to the campaign that was markedly distinct from the conventional spectacle of premium spirits advertising. The 90-second film dramatised Marshall Taylor's racing career and linked his determination to Hennessy's "Never stop. Never settle." platform, according to lbbonline.com.
Sound design received exceptional attention in production. Ruben Mercadal, Associate Director of Film Production at Droga5, confirmed that Philip Kay scored the music to picture for the main film, with Q Department crafting sound design frame by frame to complement the music and the film's emotional arc. That granular approach to audio — building the soundscape in direct relationship to the score rather than layering it over a finished cut — reflects a production philosophy more common in feature film than in advertising, and gives Major a sensory density that reinforces its subject matter.
Nas delivered the voiceover narration, a casting decision that connected Hennessy's longstanding relationship with hip-hop culture to the specific historical register of Taylor's story. The choice grounded the film's tone: neither sentimental biography nor commercial puffery, but something closer to an act of cultural recovery. The agency, Droga5, New York, operated as lead creative on the campaign with Radical Media handling production.
The integrated campaign extended beyond the film itself, running across social, mobile, desktop, and television in the United States throughout 2018, per lbbonline.com. Kyle O'Brien, Creative Works Editor at The Drum, published positive coverage of the campaign on April 12, 2018, noting the film's treatment of Taylor's legacy as a meaningful creative proposition.
ARCHIVENo verified performance data for the Major campaign is publicly available in terms of direct attribution metrics such as view counts, earned media value, or sales lift figures tied specifically to this instalment. The analysis that follows draws on structural and market evidence.
Hennessy sold 7.8 million nine-litre cases in 2018, up 2.6% from 7.6 million cases in 2017, according to thespiritsbusiness.com. The brand's share of the global cognac market stood at approximately 50%, per thespiritsbusiness.com, while its US position exceeded 60% of the market, according to shankennewsdaily.com, in a year when the US cognac category itself grew 6.5% by volume, per blog.cognac-expert.com. These figures do not isolate the contribution of Major, but they establish that the broader Wild Rabbit platform was operating during a period of sustained commercial growth for Hennessy in the United States.
Structurally, Major demonstrates several characteristics associated with durable branded entertainment. The campaign's narrative subject — a real, historically verifiable figure — provides a factual anchor that resists the rapid cultural decay typical of abstract aspirational advertising. The deployment of a director with a distinct cinematic voice, a culturally credible narrator, and a frame-by-frame approach to sound design signals a production ambition that extends beyond the norms of the alcoholic drinks category. Clapboard scores Major at 63 out of 100, reflecting a campaign that executes its brief with craft and cultural specificity but whose reach and measurable industry recognition remain limited in publicly available documentation.
Hennessy V.S Major is a 2018 film campaign created by Droga5 in the United States. It is the fifth chapter of Hennessy's Wild Rabbit platform and centres on Marshall "Major" Taylor, a world champion African American cyclist, narrated by Nas and directed by Derek Cianfrance of Radical Media.
Derek Cianfrance directed the Hennessy Major film through Radical Media. Known for emotionally immersive dramatic work, Cianfrance brought a cinematic register to the 90-second film, which dramatised Marshall Taylor's racing career and connected his determination to Hennessy's "Never stop. Never settle." tagline, according to lbbonline.com.
The Wild Rabbit platform is Hennessy's long-running creative campaign, launched in 2012 by Droga5 with the tagline "Never stop. Never settle." According to observer.com, it targets younger African American and Hispanic men who define success through personal ambition. Major, released in April 2018, is its fifth instalment.
Marshall "Major" Taylor was an African American world champion cyclist in the late nineteenth century who overcame systematic racial barriers to reach the top of his sport. Hennessy chose him as a subject whose biography embodied the Wild Rabbit platform's core idea of relentless personal ambition, as reported by multivu.com.
Droga5, New York, created the Hennessy Major campaign. The agency won the Hennessy creative account in April 2011, according to clapboard.com, and has led the Wild Rabbit platform since its 2012 launch. Ruben Mercadal, Associate Director of Film Production at Droga5, confirmed the 2018 brief was received in summer 2017.
Hennessy held more than 60% of the US cognac market in 2018, according to shankennewsdaily.com, in a category that reached 6.1 million nine-litre cases that year, up 6.5% year over year, per blog.cognac-expert.com. The United States was the largest national cognac market in the world that year.
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