Finalist for Social Media Campaign in Food and Beverage: Ode To Cinema
Ode To Cinema was one of the finalists in the Social Media Campaign of the Year in Food and Beverage category at the Social Media Marketing Awards 2025.
What was the strategy behind the campaign, what channels played the biggest roles, what lessons were learnt? We spoke to &FRIENDS, the team behind the Ode To Cinema campaign, to learn more:
Our campaign, ‘Ode to Cinema,’ was created for Campari to celebrate Negroni Week and honour Campari’s longstanding relationship with cinema, including its role as the Official Partner of the Cannes Film Festival.
We turned celebrated bartenders – the “Red Hands” – into the leading characters of a series of cinematic vignettes. Each short film was shot in the style of a different classic film genre, from moody 1950s Film Noir to playful Wes-Anderson-style whimsy, each one showcasing a bartender’s personal take on the iconic Negroni.
The Challenge
We wanted to celebrate two things at once:
Campari’s deep heritage in cinema and its ongoing presence at Cannes.
The craftsmanship of the year’s roster of Red Hands bartenders and their role as cultural tastemakers.
At the same time, we needed to hero the Negroni itself for Negroni Week. The challenge was to do justice to all three – Campari, cinema, and the cocktail – within a short timeframe and tight production constraints.
The Strategy
Our strategy was to create a social-first campaign that felt as elevated and cinematic as a TVC, while being nimble and modular for social platforms.
Three guiding insights shaped the work:
Storytelling over advertising: Audiences engage more deeply with narrative and aesthetic worlds than with traditional product pushes.
Cultural connection: By leaning into cinema, a passion point shared globally, we could make the bartender stories more resonant.
Pragmatic creativity: Each vignette was designed to be captured on a single studio set that could be redressed between scenes, maximising time with talent and maintaining quality.
Channels and Formats
The campaign was designed for social distribution, primarily across Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and paid/organic cutdowns. Our modular approach meant each vignette could run as:
Full-length hero films
Short trailers and teasers
Behind-the-scenes moments
Still photography for posts and stories
This multi-format delivery allowed Campari to engage audiences across the funnel – from awareness to advocacy.
The Impact
The campaign successfully:
Elevated the perception of Negroni Week as a cultural, cinematic celebration.
Delivered strong engagement rates across social platforms, particularly with the hero films.
Provided Campari with a flexible library of assets to use across global markets, maximising return on a single production.
We’re most proud of the combination of elevated storytelling and stripped-back production. In a single shoot day, with limited budget and talent availability, we transformed one studio into four distinct film worlds – proving that premium, cinematic storytelling for social can be achieved without blockbuster resources.
What We Learned
Constraints can be creative fuel: Limitations forced us to focus on storytelling, inventive set design, and tight creative execution.
Lean teams move faster: A small, focused crew helped us pivot quickly on the day and capture all four films without sacrificing quality.
Social audiences respond to premium craft: People notice and engage with well-told stories, even in short-form content.
What’s Next
We’re excited to keep blurring the lines between branded content and culture, leaning further into cinematic storytelling that’s designed for the realities of social platforms.
For Campari specifically, we see opportunities to continue spotlighting bartenders as cultural icons, using them as the storytellers who bring both heritage and innovation to life.
For social media marketing more broadly, we’re inspired by how modular creative ecosystems (one production yielding many stories) can help brands deliver world-class creative at the speed of social.
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