Art Direction & Campaign | Motion Graphics
Jim & Tonic: Skooma Absinthe
My Role
Sole designer on the account at Social Nucleus, working in partnership with a copywriter and without creative direction above me: concept, motion design, video editing and ad creative across the full campaign, from launch through three months of optimisation.
The Challenge
From the depths of Tamriel comes Skooma. Jim & Tonic, the London craft distillery, partnered with Rebel Distillers to produce an officially licensed Elder Scrolls beverage: a rich absinthe rouge in a purple ceramic bottle. The product and bottle design came from the distillery collaboration; we were handed the mockups and asked to build everything that would launch it.
Launching it meant working inside three sets of constraints at once:
Meta's alcohol advertising restrictions: age-gated audiences, limited claims, restricted formats
Licensed IP: creative that honoured a global gaming franchise and survived brand approval
A limited-edition product with a finite window to convert a passionate but niche audience
The answer was video. Motion content carried the product's story and the franchise's atmosphere in formats built for busy social feeds, targeted at gaming audiences aged 21 to 45 across the UK, USA, Canada and Europe.
Key Performance Stats
The Creative
Working closely with the copywriter on the Jim & Tonic account, we managed to formulate a campaign that tapped directly into the cult following of the Elder Scrolls audience.
Together we created content which resonated strongly with the product’s target audience through the use of copy which aligned closely with the game’s tone of voice, paired with visuals that created immediate impact from the audience’s social media feeds.
The Campaign Refresh
The success of the campaign was such that there was significant amounts of user-generated content online from purchases. This UGC allowed us to generate follow-up campaigns which added an additional layer of social-proofing to the paid ad content. This resulted in extended runs of the product, beyond the initially planned limited-edition release.
