Fireball Battle 2025

The brand

Fireball is a cinnamon-flavoured Canadian whisky liqueur, created in the 1980s and distributed in France by Marie Brizard Wine and Spirits. It is the number one whisky liqueur brand in the United States, with a festive, spicy, "shots with friends" world and a red dragon as its mascot.

The concept

The Fireball Battle is a contest for professional bartenders, who compete to create the spiciest and most original Fireball shooter. Every stage is filmed and posted on the brand's Instagram account, and the community votes with likes. The grand winner gets a trip to the United States.

The goals: recruit bartenders and rally them around the brand, introduce Fireball as a cocktail and a shooter, and build a video series that makes people vote and react. The operation relies on Marion Tagaux, bartender and brand ambassador.

The four stages

1. Call for entries. A deck and an Instagram carousel explain the rules. Bartenders send a video of under 2 minutes where they introduce themselves and make their own recipe.
2. Shortlist. Marion picks the 3 best profiles.
3. Semi-final. The crew films 2 surprise challenges in each semi-finalist's bar, like the Firewheel, a wheel that imposes the cocktail's flavour profile. The community votes: the least liked is out.
4. Final. The 2 finalists join Marion for a last challenge as a pair, for example making a cocktail blindfolded. Marion names the winner.

What I did

• Designed the concept and the challenges, including the Firewheel
• Chose and coordinated suppliers, including the making of the wheel
• Wrote the presentation deck and the rules to recruit bartenders
• Organised travel for the whole team and the candidates
• Ran the semi-final and final shoots on site
• Followed the content in cross-post with Marion, published and animated the account

The results

On the two final videos alone: 35,603 views, 787 likes, 94 comments and 49 followers gained. Across all five videos: 588,325 views. Instagram statistics, reels cross-posted on Facebook.