A festival sponsorship turned into multi-year media campaign.
Client
Havana Club
Category
Influencer Marketing – Cultural PR – Creative Direction & Content Production
Challenge
How do you make a drinks brand matter when festivals are already crowded with logos, banners and activations? For Havana Club, Les Ardentes and Rolling Loud were not just two weekends on the calendar. They were a chance to build a deeper connection with music culture, with fans and with brand ambassadors in a way that would last long after the stages went dark.
Solution
Kill Your Darlings transformed a standard sponsorship into a multi-touch campaign that blended influencer marketing, cultural PR and creative direction.
We partnered with the right mix of creators and ambassadors, ensuring that Havana Club became part of their personal festival stories. Through cultural PR, the partnership extended beyond the festival grounds into lifestyle and nightlife media, positioning the brand alongside music and culture.
Together with our trusted production teams, we provided creative direction and content production. The visuals captured at the festivals were not just built for social media; they were scaled up and distributed across digital out-of-home (DOOH) screens in Belgium and the Netherlands, where they ran for more than two years.
The sponsorship became more than a logo on a stage. It evolved into the anchor point for Havana Club’s ambassadors, cultural storytelling and campaign activity.
Results
The presence of Havana Club at Les Ardentes and Rolling Loud turned into a long-term cultural platform. Influencers and ambassadors generated authentic coverage across social channels, giving the brand a voice that resonated with festival-goers and their communities. National and lifestyle media amplified the story, connecting Havana Club directly to music culture.
A complete suite of photo and video assets extended the impact far beyond the two festival weekends, while DOOH campaigns in Belgium and the Netherlands continued to broadcast festival content for over two years.
What began as a single sponsorship became a long-term cultural strategy proving that with the right mix of partnerships, PR and creative direction, a drinks brand can transcend logo placement and build cultural relevance.
Credits
Photo & video
:
Twan Brooks & Edward Opdebeeck
Experiental
:
Wasserman
