Vicky Elmer

Overview

I led the BACARDÍ × Soho House partnership as a culture-led programme designed to build brand heat, credibility and advocacy with a highly influential audience. The strategy was simple: create a series of moments where great music, great people and great cocktails came together in environments that felt genuinely exclusive and culturally relevant, not “sponsored”.

I anchored the partnership at Shoreditch House, chosen for its 21–30 membership skew, strong music credentials and natural fit with BACARDÍ’s positioning. The target audience was the cultural engine room: people working across creative industries, music, media and wider culture, including talent and tastemakers.

Objectives

Primary objectives

• Drive influencer and tastemaker engagement

• Build long-term relationships with cultural connectors and key partners

• Create high-quality assets that travelled beyond the event moment

Secondary objectives

• Maintain BACARDÍ’s credibility in music

• Reinforce the Untameable proposition

• Strengthen perceptions of liquid credentials through craft and bartender advocacy

Programme Design

I built the partnership as a sequence of five high-impact events, supported by additional tasting and cocktail education moments. The programme balanced cultural credibility (artists and settings) with a scalable content and relationship model.

Five partnership events

• Shoreditch House Pool Party with Grandmaster Flash

• The BRIT Awards afterparties (co-hosted with Universal Music) × 2

• The Great Escape Festival launch party in Brighton (aligned to Soho House expansion)

• Shoreditch House Tensnake party (Untameable artist moment)

Additional activations

• Rum tastings × 2

• Cocktail masterclasses

• First refusal on selected high-profile artist afterparties across Soho House venues throughout the year

Signature Moment: The BRITs Afterparties

I co-hosted the Universal Music BRIT Awards afterparties with Soho House, building BACARDÍ’s reputation as a brand that can deliver world-class experiences with credible talent and craft at the centre. The programme combined premium production, high-profile guests and a bartender-led cocktail experience, creating a setting where artists and tastemakers naturally generated organic content and advocacy.

Alongside Soho House, I also extended the BRITs footprint through additional artist and partner activations, including curated transport experiences engineered to create story-worthy, shareable moments without relying on paid sponsorship fees, achieved through relationship leverage and partner value exchange.

Strategic Impact

This partnership helped shift BACARDÍ from “visible sponsor” to credible cultural host, using Soho House as a high-value environment to build trust, advocacy and long-term relationships with people who influence what becomes culturally relevant next. It established a repeatable model for culture-led brand partnerships: exclusive settings, credible talent, bartender craft, and content that travels.

PARTY OVERVIEW

Hosted by BACARDÍ and Soho House, Universal Music threw the best party of the evening, during one of the most important nights in the British music industry calendar.

Jazzie B warmed the crowd up, before Katy Perry, Ellie Goulding and Lorde took to the decks for a surprise DJ set which sent the dance floor wild. The girls played some of the year’s biggest hits, including a couple of their own tracks, which saw Jessie J, Daisy Lowe, Emeli Sande, Rizzle Kicks, Dougie Poynter and HAIM joining guests to party into the small hours.

Award winners, Ellie Goulding and Lorde, received rapturous applause having just won Best UK Female and Lorde for Best International Female respectively. Bastille were also in the crowd celebrating their best breakthrough act Brit.

Held at a Soho House pop up venue under Waterloo Bridge, the building made for an imposing entrance, as VIP artists and guests arrived in style in chauffeured Audi Cars from the awards. The building was decorated in signature Soho House style with low-level lighting and vintage furniture, split across two levels for guests to enjoy the party.

Guests were served bespoke BACARDÍ cocktails made by some of London’s best bartenders. These included The Daiquiri, Perfect Storm, Old Cuban and Puerto Rican Punch. Canapés provided by Soho House were also served and included mini Dirty Burgers, homemade chicken & mushroom pies, mac & cheese alongside a sweet selection including chocolate brownies, lemon tart and doughnuts.

BACARDI startenders for the event:

• Tom Walker- The Savoy

• Steven Tarr- Milk and Honey

• Terry Cashman- Callooh Callay

• Teddy Joseph- White Lion

• Ali Reynolds- Hawksmoor

• Matt Robertson- Hawksmoor

• Abdul Kweli- Gordon Ramsey

Additional activity around the Brits not connected to Soho House included chartering three boats down the Thames, one with Coda Music, and 2 with Universal Music, to take all the Coda Music artists and all the artists signed to Universal, from the Brits Awards ceremony to the Brit Awards after parties. BACARDÍ cocktails were created by London’s finest mixologists, and world class event production took over all three boats making them THE party boats of the awards season and cementing BACARDÍ as a brand that throws world class parties with credible artists in music. This was amplified by the volume of artists voluntarily sharing branded content from the boats (including bespoke cocktails created around the artists’ personalities which they particularly enjoyed). These collaborations were negotiated at cost without a sponsorship fee paid to either Coda or Universal Music, by leveraging key relationships.

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