ANGOSTURA cocoa bitters
The brand's third bitters flavor debut in nearly 200 years
In 2020, The House of ANGOSTURA® launched its third bitters flavor in almost 200 years, ANGOSTURA® cocoa bitters. The nutty and herbal blend made with world-famous Trinitario cocoa was bound to warm the hearts of cocktail aficionados, but a global pandemic changed the landscape dramatically.
Hill+Knowlton Strategies was asked to develop a launch plan for the latest product from ANGOSTURA with the goal of exciting professional bartenders while growing brand awareness and affinity.
The approach was to create a social-first campaign, leveraging PR and influencer engagement, which would cut through the noise and engage target audiences, all while positioning ANGOSTURA as an innovator within the cocktail industry.
The campaign needed to be bold and attention-grabbing, so H+K designed beautiful, dynamic, and engaging content which encapsulated brand messaging and celebrated ANGOSTURA’s heritage. Knowing Instagram was the platform where the brand’s bartender audience is most engaged, H+K developed assets catered to that channel while ensuring creativity published across social accounts for a truly splashy debut.
As well as changing the profile pictures across ANGOSTURA social channels to a solid cocoa purple – used on the bottle’s cap – we published a 15-post Instagram collage to build anticipation for the launch and give their social feed a full cocoa bitters look and feel. By launch day, the ANGOSTURA Instagram feed revealed a map of images unveiling the new flavor and bottle design.
The team also coordinated the shipment of cocoa bitters press kits to industry experts, brand ambassadors, bartenders, top lifestyle and beverage journalists, and influencers. Key industry members captured “unboxing” videos of their cocoa bitters press kits, taking over social media with covetable posts and stories sharing their premium cocoa bitters sampling boxes, which included high-end branded bar accessories and a recipe card alongside the new flavor. In an Instagram Live session, the brand’s Global Ambassador and cocktail extraordinaire Daniyel Jones demonstrated how to give the classic Espresso Martini an innovative twist using ANGOSTURA cocoa bitters.
Since the official launch in August 2020, the team secured 24 media placements and 166 pieces of cocoa bitters social media content from influencers and media, resulting in over 16 million impressions. The creative content has resulted in more than 286K organic social impressions and 14k engagements. The last tile of the Instagram puzzle collage was posted on the day of the launch and received over 3.3k organic engagements, becoming ANGOSTURA bitters’ most engaged post on Instagram to date.