Cucumbers harvested to garnish Hendrick’s gin and tonic around the
globe
JUNE 14, 2017: Today
is the most MARVELOUS day for budding botanists the world over, for today is
World Cucumber Day, when these lovingly cultivated curious green fruits can be
harvested to meet their true purpose in life: to garnish a Hendrick’s Gin &
Tonic.
Hendrick’s brand-owner, William Grant & Sons, has once again shown
its commitment to the ‘unusual’ in building global attention for the best-selling
super-premium gin, which is oddly infused with cucumber and rose, playing
perfectly to its eccentric and distinctive marketing approach. The global campaign, themed ‘Cultivate the
Unusual’, invited consumers to take part in a World Cucumber Day experiment,
based on scientific evidence that shows cucumbers respond best to outside
stimuli including music, perfumes and being protected by mini ‘sleeping bags’,
producing larger, juicer and tastier fruits.
It’s believed that thousands
of green-fingered enthusiasts worldwide have taken part in the experiment,
either growing their own cucumber or adopting a cucumber virtually through
Facebook (http://m.me/CucumberAdoptionService).
The campaign – promoted via
Hendrick’s own digital channels, YouTube (https://youtu.be/aJBcvo408nI), Facebook and Instagram has
also relied extensively on activations through Global Travel Retail, running in
key locations both in the build up to World Cucumber Day and post today’s
celebrations.
WGS has worked particularly
closely with retailers including Aer Rianta International, DFS, Heinemann, King
Power and Lagardère Travel Retail to bring the campaign to life
in key airports using a combination of tasting bars, glorification hot houses,
iconic branding, promoters, gifts, botanic seed trays, and striking theatre
pieces including the Hendrick’s Cucumber
Crank, the very peculiar machine designed with styling cues from agricultural
devices. When the wheel is turned, the cucumber advances through a series of
knives inside which it is sliced perfectly - to be then enjoyed in a refreshing
Hendrick’s & Tonic.
Additionally, smaller scale activations have taken
place at industry and internal events, while WGS has partnered with Harding
Retail to hold an ‘international gin day’ on its cruise ships.
Activations kicked off in May at various locations including Changi T1, Singapore, with DFS,
Kingpower at Suvarnabhumi airport, Bangkok, with Lagardère Travel Retail in Luton and ARI in Dublin T2,
continuing to run throughout June.
As well as tempting
passengers with delicious signature cocktails, free gifts on offer include a 5cl
bottle with every bottle purchased, a cucumber scented candle with every two
bottles purchased (Changi) and a beautifully styled fan (Dublin, Luton).
Retailers have supported
World Cucumber Day with great enthusiasm. Of the promotion at Dublin airport,
Paul Hunnisett, ARI Global Head of Liquor, Tobacco, Confectionery and Fine Foods said, “Gin has enjoyed a huge surge in
popularity in The Loop, Dublin Airport in recent years, driven in no small part
by Hendrick’s unusual and wondrous activations that our
customers love. It’s what makes this gin such an iconic brand. World Cucumber
Day is yet another really ‘cool’ idea that has been very well received in our
Dublin stores.”
This month (June) sees the World Cucumber Day frivolity extend to
Heinemann airports in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Copenhagen, and Sydney and will move
to Johannesburg and Munich in August and September. Apart from inviting
consumers to Celebrate with a Slice of the Unusual, all are encouraged to go
online and adopt a cucumber.
“We’ve been delighted to partner with William Grant & Sons for World
Cucumber Day; the travel retail team can always be relied upon to come up with
truly stand out activations – quirky, unusual, fun and totally mad and
eccentric,” says Ann-Kathrin Fürer (Head of Activity Management at Gebr.
Heinemann). “We’ve supported the campaign
whole-heartedly, including featuring the June Frankfurt event on our own social
media platforms, inviting travellers to take
part in our Hendrick’s World Cucumber Experiment at the A+A-Main Schengen
Tasting Bar.“
But it’s not just travellers who’ve had the chance to
engage with World Cucumber Day. Giftboxes of seeds and instruction leaflets
supplied by William Grant & Sons have enabled retail staff to cultivate and
bond with their own cucumbers from East to West.
As these are current promotions, it is still early
days for sales data. However, says William Grant & Sons Head of Marketing,
GTR, Ifan Jenkins “We know that in Luton sales were up by 35% at the end of May
and in Dublin sales of Hendrick’s doubled in the first two weeks.”
Reaction from passengers to World Cucumber Day
activations have been incredibly encouraging with many being introduced to the
world of Hendrick’s for the first time. “Fresh,
and also smooth. Not as flowery as other gins, the flavours are more subtle. The
cucumber makes it more refreshing,” commented one passenger.
“Hendrick’s is oddly infused
with rose and cucumber, so World Cucumber Day has provided us with the perfect
opportunity to reaffirm the brand’s ownership of the signature cucumber serve
and make it globally famous,” says Ifan Jenkins.
“The support we’ve received
from our retail partners has been absolutely fantastic; they’ve all really
bought into the campaign – in many cases growing their own cucumbers as well - and
have worked extraordinarily hard to maximize the visibility for passengers.
“For William Grant &
Sons, World Cucumber Day has enabled us to appeal not only to existing fans –
giving them a unique and fun way to interact with Hendrick’s, but also to invite
new audiences into our peculiarly unusual brand world.
“World Cucumber Day has been
a global campaign for Hendrick’s but Global Travel Retail has undoubtedly
played a key and vital role in spreading the word to consumers, yet again
proving the value and importance of this distribution channel.”
During the campaign,
consumers have been encouraged to sing to their fruits or read classical
literature to young seedlings and night, with added cultivation tips. Indeed,
continues Jenkins, “We appreciate that the extraordinary bonds gardeners will have formed with their cucumber
may make harvesting today a somewhat emotional experience. Nevertheless, we are
sure the pure joy of enjoying said cucumber in its rightful place – as a
garnish in a Hendrick’s gin and tonic – will more than compensate for any sense
of loss!”
And so, for those of you reading this who are preparing to harvest your
own cucumbers today, here are the key elements to consider before you brandish
your knife!
Harvest
and garnish (fully-grown cucumber)
- Do you want the good news or
the bad news first? The earlier the cucumbers are harvested, the smaller
and more tender the seeds. They will also taste sweeter and juicier. Oh,
and there’s no bad news.
- The cool calm of the early
morning or evening is perfect for cucumber harvesting. The fruits can be
kept fresh overnight by standing them stalk end down in a jug with a
little water in it. You can keep yourself fresh overnight by reading
poetry before bedtime and wearing silk pyjamas.
- Please do not yank your
cucumbers when you harvest them from the plant. Instead snip them off with
a pair of secateurs or a sharp knife. Do not use a cutlass.
- Once you have tasted your
cucumber, cut 0.3-cm slices and then submerge them in your Hendrick’s
& Tonic. If you wish to, you may then contemplate all that is
marvellous in the universe.
5.
The Mesmadunion
method of cucumber harvest & garnishment requires the following:
1.
The harvester
must wear a cloak, 3-foot winklepickers and a beak.
2.
The cucumbers
must be culled at dawn within a mile of a viaduct.
3.
The cucumbers
must be sliced with affection.
4.
The slices must
be dropped into the Hendrick's & Tonic from an altitude of three miles.
NOTES
TO EDITORS
THE SCIENCE BEHIND WORLD CUCUMBER DAY. The World Cucumber Day challenge is based on a genuine scientific experiment
by cucumber scientist Graham Brown of the University of Sydney who found that
cucumbers:
·
appreciate music with the cucumbers that listened to
rock producing measurably larger, better-tasting fruits, cylindrical in shape,
with no curving and smooth dark green skin. In stark contrast the jazz plants
showed disdain for their music by producing malformed fruits with curved and
pointed edges. The plants exposed to classical melodies displayed a tangible fondness
for it, growing healthy and shiny skinned after listening to Beethoven and Bach.
·
Prefer certain scents – particularly dill, but not sage
·
Enjoy being protected in mini sleeping bags, resulting in softer and
lighter skin and sweeter flesh.
·
Develop a sense of touch to help them grow, using tendrils
to feel and reach for surfaces to hold onto for support, particularly at night..
ABOUT
GRAHAM BROWN
Graham Brown is a research
associate at the University of Sydney, where he has been an integral research
scientist in the Plant Breeding Institute since 1973, growing stronger species
by discovering and breeding desirable traits into native plants.
Around ten years ago Graham
began breeding cucumbers and has been testing their responses to outside
stresses to discover how they can continue to thrive in the harsh Australian
climate. His research laboratory is packed with every scientific contraption
available to measure cucumbers’ reactions to the outside world, and his
greenhouse contains an abundance of beautiful, high-reaching cucumber plants.
During his decade working
with cucumbers, Graham has helped develop several specialist fruit varieties,
including a four-inch cucumber, affectionately termed the ‘cutecumber’ as well
as the most Australian Cucumber, nurtured on emu dung, Simpson desert soil, and
the calcium of yabby shells.
When not in his laboratory, Graham has a taste for hunting the
weirdest and most wonderful plants in the world. He has travelled to
far-reaching corners to find the strangest flowers and vegetables he can use in
his breeding research. Of late Graham has travelled to Pakistan, the geographical
origin of the cucumber, to discover the wildest species; to Puglia where he
collected the heirloom cucumber seeds to bring back to Australia; he’s gone
foraging in the Australian outback to collect native celery and rummaged for
the Wild Campanula flower – also known as the ‘Creeping Campanula’ - near
Portofino in Italy.
ABOUT
HENDRICK’S GIN
Hendrick’s Gin is a
deliciously super premium gin, made with a number of unusual twists to deliver
a most curious arrangement. Unlike ordinary gins, Hendrick’s Gin is
distilled in Scotland, in miniscule batches of only 500 litres at a
time. Only Hendrick’s Gin is made with infusions of cucumber and rose
petals, alongside a blend of 11 botanicals, producing a wonderfully refreshing
gin with a delightfully floral aroma. Hendrick’s Gin is made in a combination
of a Carter-Head and copper pot still, creating a divinely smooth gin with
both character and balance of subtle flavours.
ABOUT
WILLIAM GRANT & SONS
William Grant & Sons
Holdings Ltd is an independent family-owned distiller headquartered in the
United Kingdom and founded by William Grant in 1887. Today, the global premium
spirits company is owned by the fifth generation of his family and distils some
of the world’s leading brands of Scotch whisky, including the world’s most
awarded single malt Glenfiddich®, The Balvenie® range of
handcrafted single malts and the world’s third largest blended Scotch, Grant’s®,
as well as other iconic spirits brands such as Hendrick’s® Gin,
Sailor Jerry®, Tullamore D.E.W.® Irish Whiskey,
Monkey Shoulder® and Drambuie®
ABOUT
GEBR. HEINEMANN SE & Co. KG
Gebr. Heinemann is one of the top players on the
international travel retail market and the leader on the European market. It is
the only family-run business among the global players of the travel retail
industry. As a distributor, Gebr. Heinemann supplies more than 1,000 customers
in over 100 countries. In the retail sector, the company operates more than 320
Heinemann Duty Free & Travel Value shops, fashion label boutiques under
license and concept shops at 77 airports in 28 countries, along with shops at
border crossings and aboard cruise liners. The company has been designing its
Duty Free & Travel Value Shops since 2008 in accordance with an exceptional
brand concept. Today, the Heinemann Duty Free brand is present at numerous
airports worldwide including Sydney. In total, the retail operation now serves more than 40 million
customers across 120,000 square metres of retail space every year. Gebr. Heinemann has 6,000 employees around
the world.
-ENDS-
