Bombay Sapphire Turns Creative Inspiration Into a Global Movement
Bombay Sapphire's Saw This Made This is a 2022 integrated campaign created by AMV BBDO that invited people worldwide to capture what creatively inspires them and share what they subsequently made, using the hashtag #SawThisMadeThis, with film director Baz Luhrmann serving as Creative Director.
Launched on 12 October 2022, the campaign rolled out across ten markets including the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Greece, and the Netherlands, as reported by wallpaper.com. Though published in Bermuda, the campaign's ambitions were unmistakably global in scale and reach. Described as a multi-million-dollar integrated initiative, according to wallpaper.com, it spanned television, cinema, and video-on-demand, alongside a robust social participation layer anchored by the #SawThisMadeThis mechanic.
Luhrmann, in his role as Creative Director, issued what The Drum described as a creative call-to-arms — a direct challenge to the public to treat the world as a gallery of inspiration and to transform what they observed into acts of creative expression. The campaign collaborated with hundreds of artists and creators across multiple disciplines, producing before-and-after videos and photographs that demonstrated how ordinary observations could become extraordinary creative outputs. Clapboard Score for the campaign stands at 74 out of 100. Far from targeting a niche creative elite, Saw This Made This positioned itself as an open invitation — from first-time makers to established creative leaders — to participate in a shared movement rooted in the idea that creativity is an inherent human quality, not a privileged label.
Bombay Sapphire's Saw This Made This extended a deliberate multi-year repositioning of the brand. As reported by The Drum, the brand's strategic trajectory moved away from what it characterised as art elitism toward accessible, participatory sensory experience. This was not an isolated campaign decision but the continuation of a direction established by the 2021 Find Your Canvas initiative, which, as noted by Marketing Interactive, encouraged ordinary consumers to express creativity rather than presenting it as the preserve of a professional class. Saw This Made This deepened that strategy by making participation the central mechanic rather than simply the message.
The consumer insight driving the campaign rested on two propositions embedded in its creative brief: that creativity ranks as the second-most in-demand skill in the world, and that people engaged in creative pursuits demonstrably report more positive wellbeing. These convictions gave Luhrmann's call-to-arms genuine strategic grounding, connecting gin consumption with a broader cultural conversation about human potential. Conceptually, as reported by The Drum, the campaign drew on Jorge Luis Borges's The Aleph as an intellectual reference — a text concerned with seeing the entire world contained within a single point — which informed the principal film's visual and narrative logic.
Within the premium gin category, the competitive environment at launch was crowded. The global gin market was valued at approximately US $14.5 billion in 2021, according to datamintelligence.com, with premium and specialty expressions generally outperforming the broader category. By anchoring the brand to participation and creative identity rather than product attributes alone, Bombay Sapphire sought differentiation on cultural terrain rather than taste or provenance.
Juan Cabral directed the principal campaign film, titled The World Is a Gallery, for Bombay Sapphire's Saw This Made This. Production was handled by MJZ. The film was shot in Buenos Aires, as reported by The Drum, a location chosen to serve the visual ambitions of the concept. Cabral, whose reputation for constructing emotionally layered and visually precise work made him a natural fit, brought a sensibility shaped by the Borges reference — transforming mundane urban observation into a succession of charged creative moments on screen.
On screen, the film follows characters encountering ordinary details of the world around them — textures, light, objects in motion — and experiencing those encounters as sparks for creative making. The before-and-after logic of the campaign's social mechanic is dramatised through the film's structure, showing the moment of seeing and the act of making as a continuous, fluid sequence rather than two separate events. The effect positions the act of creative observation as instinctive and available to anyone, not only to trained artists.
The creative team at AMV BBDO was led by Chief Creative Officers Nicholas Hulley and Nadja Lossgott, with Creative Directors Michael Jones and Thomas Hazledine shaping the work alongside creatives Jack Smedley and George Hackforth-Jones, as documented by shots.net and Little Black Book. The social creative layer was developed by Mat Scholes, Piet Rossouw, Ant Eagle, and Kalle Everland, while design was handled by Chris Chapman, Simon Dilks, and Marion Rossignol. Agency producers Verity Elvin, Meg Everett, and Charlotte Igharo oversaw production delivery across the integrated campaign's multiple channels.
Bombay Sapphire's Saw This Made This generated documented coverage and industry attention at launch. As reported by The Drum, the campaign was characterised as a significant creative and strategic milestone for the brand, with Luhrmann's involvement amplifying earned media reach across entertainment, lifestyle, and trade press including wallpaper.com, shots.net, and lbbonline.com. The multi-million-dollar production and media investment, as described by wallpaper.com, reflected Bombay Sapphire's confidence in the campaign's ability to build cultural currency rather than simply drive short-term purchase intent.
No independently verified performance metrics — such as social reach, hashtag volume, or sales uplift attributed specifically to Saw This Made This — are publicly available from named sources at the time of writing. What can be assessed structurally is the campaign's design for measurability: the #SawThisMadeThis mechanic created a trackable, user-generated participation stream, while the ten-market rollout across television, cinema, and video-on-demand provided both broad reach and contextual premium positioning. The collaboration with hundreds of artists, as stated in campaign materials, generated a continuous content stream designed to extend the campaign's active life well beyond its October 2022 launch window.
The Clapboard Score of 74 out of 100 reflects strong creative ambition and coherent strategic architecture, with the principal film's production quality and Luhrmann's directorial vision functioning as the campaign's most distinctive asset.
Saw This Made This is a 2022 integrated campaign by Bombay Sapphire, created by AMV BBDO with Baz Luhrmann as Creative Director. It invited people to capture creative inspiration and share what they made using #SawThisMadeThis. The campaign launched on 12 October 2022, rolling out across ten markets worldwide, as reported by wallpaper.com.
Juan Cabral directed the principal film, titled The World Is a Gallery, for Saw This Made This. Production was handled by MJZ. The film was shot in Buenos Aires, according to The Drum, and was conceptually influenced by Jorge Luis Borges's The Aleph, shaping its visual treatment of everyday observation as creative inspiration.
Baz Luhrmann served as Creative Director of the Saw This Made This campaign. In that role, he issued what The Drum described as a creative call-to-arms, arguing that everyone is inherently creative. His involvement shaped both the campaign's conceptual foundation and its public positioning as a movement accessible to all, not just professional artists.
AMV BBDO, based in London, created the Saw This Made This campaign for Bombay Sapphire. The team was led by Chief Creative Officers Nicholas Hulley and Nadja Lossgott, with Creative Directors Michael Jones and Thomas Hazledine, as documented by shots.net and lbbonline.com. The campaign was published in Bermuda in October 2022.
The campaign asked participants to photograph or film something in the world that creatively inspired them, then share what they subsequently made using #SawThisMadeThis on social media. Bombay Sapphire collaborated with hundreds of artists across disciplines to produce before-and-after content demonstrating how observation can be transformed into creative expression.
Saw This Made This extended Bombay Sapphire's multi-year repositioning away from art elitism toward accessible creativity, as reported by The Drum. It followed the 2021 Find Your Canvas initiative and deepened the strategy by making social participation the campaign's central mechanic, grounding Bombay Sapphire's identity in everyday creative empowerment rather than product attributes alone.
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