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How Label5 Built the First Hologram Bartender in France
Label5's 'Holo 5, The First Hologram Bartender' is a film and experiential campaign produced in France in September 2018 by Paris agency Steve, in which the Scotch whisky brand offered consumers a free 3D pyramid accessory for their smartphone that projected a hologram-style bartender teaching four original cocktail recipes.
The campaign launched in France with a direct consumer activation at its core. According to la-martiniquaise.com, Label5's parent company La Martiniquaise announced the campaign on 1 September 2018, positioning the hologram bartender as an extension of the brand's ongoing commitment to cocktail culture and consumer education. The premise was straightforward: a physical 3D pyramid, compatible with any smartphone, transformed a video into a projected holographic illusion, making a virtual bartender appear to mix drinks in three dimensions on any flat surface.
Four cocktail tutorials formed the content backbone of the activation, according to la-martiniquaise.com: the London Collins, Five Senses, Honey Ginger, and Cocktail Ice. Each recipe was built around Label5 Scotch whisky and designed for home recreation, following a creative logic the brand had first explored with its 2015 digital series 'Whisky Confidential', as documented by lsa-conso.fr. In France, where the intersection of digital novelty and drinks culture carries particular commercial weight, the campaign sought to create a memorable brand moment that extended beyond traditional film advertising into hands-on consumer participation. The Holo 5 campaign earns a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100.
Label5 occupies a specific competitive position in the global blended Scotch whisky market. According to thedrinksbusiness.com, the brand shipped approximately 2.6 million nine-litre cases in 2018, ranking tenth among leading Scotch whisky brands worldwide. That volume figure places Label5 in a category dominated by substantially larger players: according to thespiritsbusiness.com, Johnnie Walker held the top global Scotch position with 18.9 million cases in the same year, followed at distance by Ballantine's and Chivas Regal. In France, where Label5 draws meaningful domestic support through its owner La Martiniquaise-Bardinet, the pressure to build brand distinction against these category giants is structurally persistent.
The Holo 5 campaign addresses that competitive pressure through differentiation rather than volume messaging. Rather than positioning Label5 alongside Johnnie Walker's lifestyle-led global advertising or Ballantine's longstanding creative investment in music and youth culture, Steve's approach for Label5 anchored the brand in tangible consumer utility: learning to make a better drink at home using a genuinely novel piece of technology. The hologram mechanic, delivered via a low-cost physical accessory requiring no app download beyond a video player, reduced the barrier to engagement sharply. According to la-martiniquaise.com, the 3D pyramid was offered free to consumers, meaning the campaign's activation cost to the audience was effectively zero. This structural choice reflects a clear reading of the French drinks consumer: interested in cocktail craft, open to digital novelty, but unlikely to invest heavily in unfamiliar brand interactions without an accessible entry point.
Director Lorent Kostar led the production of the Holo 5 film content, with production handled by Orbis. The creative team at Steve was led by creative director Guillaume Lartigue, with art direction by Christophe Provost and copywriting by Fabien Moussart. Agency leadership across the project included Grégoire Soufflet, Nicolas Ferry, and Michaël Abouna, with Frédéric Abeille serving as the advertiser responsible on the Label5 side.
The creative challenge Kostar and the Steve team faced was technically specific. A hologram pyramid projection depends on a precise geometric relationship between the video content and the viewer's perspective: the bartender's movements, the liquid pours, and the cocktail assembly all had to be filmed and formatted so that when refracted through the four-sided pyramid, the resulting image read as coherent and visually convincing from a normal seated viewing angle. This requirement shaped every production decision, from lighting angles designed to survive the optical distortion of the pyramid refraction to the bartender's blocking, which had to remain legible in a reduced, suspended format.
The four tutorials — London Collins, Five Senses, Honey Ginger, and Cocktail Ice, as documented by la-martiniquaise.com — each present Label5 Scotch whisky as the connective ingredient across a range of cocktail styles, from citrus-forward long drinks to more aromatic builds. The film medium, categorised under Alcoholic Drinks in the Clapboard archive, carries the full creative weight of the campaign, since the physical pyramid accessory has no value without content designed expressly for it. In this respect the Holo 5 execution is structurally indivisible: the novelty of the hologram format and the quality of the bartending content depend on each other to function.
No verified performance data for the Holo 5, The First Hologram Bartender campaign is publicly available. Neither reach figures, video views, pyramid distribution numbers, nor sales uplift metrics have been published by Label5, La Martiniquaise, or Steve in any source accessible to independent verification. Analysis of the campaign's structural effectiveness therefore draws on observable creative and commercial logic rather than reported outcomes.
The campaign's design contains several elements that support measurable impact in principle. The free 3D pyramid accessory created a physical object associated with the Label5 brand that entered consumers' homes — a distribution mechanic with inherent recall value distinct from standard film advertising. According to thedrinksbusiness.com, Label5 volume grew to approximately 2.7 million nine-litre cases in 2019, representing a rise of around 3.8 percent year on year, though no causal link between this growth and the Holo 5 campaign can be established from available data. The cocktail tutorial format, consistent with the brand's 2015 'Whisky Confidential' series as documented by lsa-conso.fr, reflects a content strategy built for repeat engagement rather than single-exposure awareness. In France, where Label5 benefits from the distribution infrastructure of La Martiniquaise-Bardinet, an experiential campaign of this kind is well-placed to reinforce retailer relationships alongside consumer engagement. The Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflects the campaign's creative ambition and technical novelty set against the absence of independently verifiable outcome data.
The Holo 5 campaign is a September 2018 French advertising activation by Label5, created by Paris agency Steve, in which a free smartphone 3D pyramid accessory projected a hologram-style bartender demonstrating four cocktail recipes built around Label5 Scotch whisky, according to la-martiniquaise.com.
Steve, a Paris-based advertising agency, created the Holo 5 campaign for Label5. The creative team included creative director Guillaume Lartigue, art director Christophe Provost, and copywriter Fabien Moussart, with Lorent Kostar directing and production handled by Orbis, as documented by Clapboard.
The Label5 hologram bartender demonstrated four cocktail recipes: the London Collins, Five Senses, Honey Ginger, and Cocktail Ice. According to la-martiniquaise.com, each recipe incorporated Label5 Scotch whisky and was designed to be recreated at home by consumers who received the free 3D pyramid accessory.
The Holo 5 activation used a physical 3D pyramid placed on a smartphone screen to refract a specially produced video into a holographic projection. According to la-martiniquaise.com, the pyramid was offered free to consumers in France, requiring no app, and made the virtual bartender appear suspended above the device.
Label5 ranked tenth among leading global Scotch whisky brands in 2018, shipping approximately 2.6 million nine-litre cases, according to thedrinksbusiness.com. The brand is owned by La Martiniquaise-Bardinet and holds particular market strength in France, where the Holo 5 campaign was launched in September 2018.
The Holo 5, The First Hologram Bartender campaign by Label5 receives a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's technical novelty and creative ambition in the French alcoholic drinks market, balanced against the absence of independently verifiable performance data for the September 2018 activation.
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