Insight & Strategy: She /

On 30 November, Diageo-owned whisky brand J&B Rare released a Christmas ad called She that was watched 4 million times in one day.

Created by agency El Ruso de Rocky, Madrid alongside production company Agosto. The three-minute film shows an old man secretly teaching himself to apply makeup. At the end of the film, it is revealed that he was learning in order to do his trans granddaughter’s makeup, in a gesture of acceptance and love.

The emotional ad quickly went viral in Spain and beyond, and reflects J&B’s brand purpose of helping people – all people – celebrate together. The Christmas campaign followed previous work by the brand to support LGBTQ+ rights and representation, including taking its Madrid Pride float on a tour across rural Spain throughout the summer of 2022.

To find out more about the brief, strategy, and purpose of the campaign, we spoke to Ángela Pacheco, creative director at El Ruso de Rocky, who said:

• J&B has always broken the mould in the often macho whisky category

• Real experiences inspired the story, which presents a more hopeful depiction of trans people’s relationships with their families

• The challenge was to balance honesty and bravery with the tenderness and happy ending expected of a Christmas ad

• The brand and product are subtly placed in the film, which makes the love story the focus

Results Updated 9/5/2023: According to the agency, the campaign received 5 million organic views in 72 hours and was recalled by 46% of viewers, amounting to double the recall percentage of other Christmas campaigns. She featured in 314 news publications, reaching 345 million people with a PR value of €2.5m ($2.8m). J&B reported a 40% increase in followers on Instagram, a 114% increase on Twitter, and a 78% increase YouTube.

Tell us about the brand and its key challenge.

Ángela Pacheco: J&B is a really well-known brand here in Spain. It's been around for years and years. But even though it's in a very masculine or macho-associated category, J&B has always been very inclusive. It's a whisky that is easy to drink, anyone can enjoy it. So it doesn't have that image that other brands from the category might have. If you want to defer from those category conventions, you have to break with them, and if you want to be an inclusive drink, you have to be inclusive in your communications and do things that support that inclusivity.

What work has the brand been doing for the LGBTQ+ community?

J&B wants everyone to be able to join the party, leaving no one behind. We [society] celebrate Pride in big cities. But we forget about small towns. So J&B didn't stop our parade in Madrid, we continued celebrating Pride in many villages around Spain during the summer. It's called ‘Orgullo de Pueblo’ (rural Pride). We wanted to celebrate love where it needed to be celebrated.

Did you receive a specific brief for this campaign?

We wanted to continue what the brand had started with Orgullo de Pueblo. If you don't want to leave anyone out of the celebrations, this time at Christmas, the brief was clear – we wanted to do a story that celebrates that absolutely everyone is welcome at the Christmas table. And it was clear to us that we had a unique opportunity to do a very emotional and touching story that celebrates those who learn to understand. Those who learn how to celebrate their relatives, even though they might not understand what they are going through. They just want to be supportive. That was the brief.

Were there any business objectives to meet?

There was a very simple but challenging metric: reach a broad audience with an inclusive message that will help change mindsets. Internally, we challenged ourselves to create the most touching Christmas campaign of the year.

Lots of brands are putting out emotional campaigns around the holidays – how did you ensure this film was distinctive and attributable?

We were continuing what we had done in the summer. We haven't seen that many inclusive Christmas commercials. The brand's actions during the summer put us in a unique position, a territory that isn't very common at Christmas.

Where did the insight for this story come from?

During the Orgullo de Pueblo campaign, we [got to know] a lot of people from the LGBTQI+ collective. Many of them told us that Christmas for them was not a nice period, because they have to go back into the closet. Because they don't want to upset their grandparents who are old and might not understand.

At Christmas, when we are sitting down with our families, we all somehow act differently. Maybe you don't talk about politics the same way as you would with friends, for example. So that feeling was something that everyone could easily relate to. But [for LGBTQI+ people], they are hiding the person they love, or their real identity, which is huge. The moment we heard those stories, we knew that we had to do something with them. Not giving som the opportunity to be themselves is a massive way of leaving someone out of the celebrations. It was clear to us that this story had to be related to that insight.

What research informed the campaign?

We found this term used by the LGBTQI+ community, 'homosexualedad' [a portmanteau of the Spanish words for homosexuality and loneliness] – the loneliness of homosexuality. It's that feeling of being so lonely at Christmas, because you cannot be yourself. We've been doing a lot of research into that and found existing research that says that [for] almost 77% of trans people or people transitioning, family is a very difficult environment to show themselves as they truly [feel]. 

The product isn't that prominent in the ad; how did you define the right amount of J&B branding?

If you look carefully, the brand is at the beginning of the story and at the supermarket, but this is a story about a love between a grandfather and his granddaughter. So we didn't really want to do a commercial about whisky. We wanted to do a commercial about celebrating love. And this is a brand that celebrates everyone. So it makes sense that it's at the end when the celebration is real and all the family is celebrating the granddaughter. That's where the brand has to be, otherwise, it's not going to be real, it's not going to be honest.

Did you have to convince the client to go with this storyline?

They were completely on board from the moment they heard the story, and we all ended up crying. So we had the idea, but they gave it wings to fly. They made this story so big, and they have fought with us. There wasn't any need to convince them, they believed in the power of this story [immediately].

For a lot of people, the experience of transitioning is far removed from the portrayal in this campaign – why was it important to present something hopeful, even if it wasn't necessarily reflective of reality? 

We wanted to do a Christmas story, and Christmas stories have to have happy endings. Unfortunately, it is not reality, but we want to change people's mindsets with this story. Hopefully one day, we can say this is more realistic. But we wanted to do a Christmas tale [with] people who normally are not included in these kinds of stories so that they feel represented. So maybe it's not 100% real, but the objective of this commercial is so real, which is to make everybody feel part of the celebration.

How did you go about casting and how did your talent inform the process?

Both actors were super important. The grandfather had to be an incredible actor because he had to express all the tenderness and love but also the frustration of trying to learn how to use the makeup. The granddaughter, played by Ella Di Amore, is a trans actress. We were clear that this character could only be [played] by a trans person, who understands what the granddaughter is going through – the fear, but also the pride.

She had to somehow have felt it before. It wasn't an easy search, but we finally found her. The moment we saw her, we knew she was our Anna. She has a really strong personal story and this commercial has been really useful to her. Long story short, she wasn't talking with her sister, and when her sister saw this commercial, she called her and told her that now she understands and that she wanted to get back together again. So it's been super powerful for many people, but also for our actress.

What has the response been like so far?

The response has been massive. The first day, we already had millions of views, and we hadn't invested in any media – it's been incredible, very positive. From people we didn't even expect. Of course, there are negative comments. But personally, those negative comments just [show that] we have to keep on going. And we have to keep on telling this kind of story, because, obviously, there are still people from our society who don't understand what's going on. 

Did you define a target audience for this campaign?

Everyone – obviously over 21. We knew that the wider our audience was, the further our message would spread. It is such a beautiful message that it deserves to travel as widely as possible.

What were the challenges that you came up against making this?

The biggest challenge was to build a simple story that could help change mindsets. It had to be tender but also it had to be brave. We owe it to the LGBTQI+ collective. But it also had to be a Christmas story. So finding the balance between that braveness and that tenderness was probably the biggest challenge. Otherwise, it was surprisingly easy. The client was on board and the director was awesome, he immediately got the story.

What was the media plan?

We have done several out-of-home ads, short digital pieces. The only goal is to drive you to the long commercial. The movie has become viral, because of the people, because of social. It's been shared on WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram and every social media platform. In the first day, we reached almost 4 million views, organically. In a country like Spain, this is a big number.

What was your biggest takeaway from the campaign?

It's to keep on telling brave stories, honest stories that are able to change mindsets. If you want to do something powerful, you have to do something powerful. I hope that this will be a beautiful example of the positive impact we can have as brands.