EXOTICO MISTICO FILM CONTEST

As a growing brand, Exotico Tequila’s goal is to create opportunities for meaningful fan engagement — beyond traditional likes, comments and tags — in the social space. And, as a tequila that wants to own the spooky season, we developed an edge-of-your-seat experience for our thrill-seekers: a scary film contest that brings original short stories to life on the silver screen.

Each year, we put our twisted minds together and invent new ways to pit these terrifying tales against each other in a battle to the death. The results? More views, more engagement and more sleepless nights. Every. Single. Time.

Services

Identity

Each Mistico festival is rebranded with a unique look inspired by all things that go bump in the night. Glitch effects were used in 2019 to evoke found-footage and Poltergeist-like vibes, and our second year used a retro illustrative look to capitalize on the Stranger Things and Lovecraft Country aesthetic trends. For 2021, we took a page from A24’s book and leaned into their signature black and white ambiance with closeup shots of our talent showing visceral emotions.

Campaign Development and Production

Every September, we launch teasers and recaps of the previous year’s films across social, Spotify and YouTube to generate excitement, and we pair each short with a specially crafted Exotico cocktail and theatrical movie poster. Throughout the month, we release regular content encouraging audience members to follow along and vote for their favorite.

In past years, we crowdsourced stories from our loyal followers and selected four that were produced in early October then released in the final days leading up to Halloween. Story submission winners received movie night gift boxes complete with blankets, popcorn and thumb drives of the winning shorts. One grand prize winner won a custom Director’s Chair with their name and movie title on it, a projector to screen their film and a BONY Award for Best Story.

But in 2021, we decided to shake things up a bit. Based on research, we found that people generally prefer either Blanco or Reposado tequila, so we used this insight to develop the concept of teams. We turned two of our own story concepts into spooky shorts—one for Team Blanco and one for Team Reposado—and audience members had to choose a side and vote accordingly. Once the results were in, ten randomly selected people who voted for the winning movie got a prize pack with tons of Exotico swag.

2019 Winners

The first year of the contest was a pumpkin-smashing success. Fan submissions ranged from ghastly ghosts to creepy creatures in the night to true tales of terror. Some submitted pictures. Others toiled at the fright of an empty Exotico Tequila bottle.

888,167

IMPRESSIONS

500K

UNIQUE AUDIENCE MEMBERS

289,205

SOCIAL ENGAGEMENTS

1 IN 4

WATCHED THE VIDEOS PAST THE FIRST 30 SECONDS

2020 Winners

Building on our success the previous year, we created four more films and expanded the contest to include a grand prize-winning vote-off.

2021 Winner

This year, Team Blanco and Team Reposado went head-to-head with their very own films developed internally by our team, and audience members voted for their favorite on social media knowing they could win an Exotico prize pack.