Chicago Marketing Campaign Essay

On top of the marketing campaign, Bacardi also formed a joint advertising campaign with Pan Am airlines, using the slogans “Leave the Dry Lands Behind” and “Fly to Cuba and Bathe in Bacardi rum” to help encourage Americans to keep coming to Cuba for Bacardi rum (32). Americans enthusiastically responded to the invitation to escape to Cuba and tourism doubled in the span of 10 years, from 45,000 in 1916 to 90,000 in 1926. Cuba became a tropical retreat where guests were greeted with complimentary cocktails and were introduced to the popular drink, the original daiquiri (32). Due to the increase in demand, Emilio also built and opened a new distillery in Santiago de Cuba in order to produce more rum (11). Moving past prohibition, the 1930’s

Closer to the 1950’s, the Bacardi family had full support for Fidel Castro in the Cuban Revolution, as it was a natural carryover from the past 100 years of support in Cuban nationalistic movements. At the time, Pepin Bosch was chairman of the company and he gave tens of thousands of dollars of his own money, just as several other family members did (15). In 1959 when Fidel Castro came to power, Bacardi was the most supportive Cuban company associated with the revolution. This relationship did not last long however (15). October 14, 1960 is the day everything changed when all of the Bacardi company assets in Cuba were confiscated without compensation (36). The Cuban government seized Bacardi’s distillery but found that the company destroyed the yeast stock at the plant to ensure it did not fall into the hands of Castro (5). Despite losing everything in Cuba, Bacardi continued its operations within five different countries, United States, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Spain, and The Bahamas (8). The 1960’s ended with more expansion. Bacardi began production in Recife, Brazil in 1961, opened a distillery in Nassau Bahamas in 1965, and also in 1965, relocated Bacardi International Limited from the Bahamas to Bermuda

This brand is produced in the Los Altos region of Jalisco in Mexico and sells about 1.3 million cases a year. Bacardi received the brand name, a production facility, and a long term supply of blue agave, with the goal of expanding the sales of Cazadores in the U.S. where it currently had limited distribution (45). Also occurring in 2002, Bacardi opened a new facility in China (8). In 2003, Bacardi opened the Casa Bacardi Visitor Center at the Bacardi distillery at Catano, Puerto Rico. This was a multimillion dollar, state-of-the-art tourist experience which celebrates the Bacardi family, company history, and unique qualities of the Bacardi rum as well as offers a variety of different tours for guests to experience (8) (46). A year later, in 2004, Bacardi expanded once again after purchasing Grey Goose vodka, the world’s number one super premium vodka