Dive Brief:

• Bacardi rum launched a campaign last weekend on Snapchat that featured sponsored lenses with music from electronic dance trio Major Lazer, Adweek reported. The lenses let smartphone users add flashing lights and Bacardi bottles to a selfie or put their facial features inside a swirling vortex. Fans can make videos and submit them for a chance to appear in a three-minute music video of the song “Front of the Line,” featuring fans' images. 
• The lenses were featured for 24 hours, but Snapchat users can unlock them by scanning Snapcodes on Bacardi’s Facebook and Instagram feeds. The lenses are available in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Spain.
• Bacardi and BBDO New York debuted a video this month that was created using Instagram’s Boomerang feature, which runs clips forward then backward repeatedly, and highlighted the rum brand helping people in a Caribbean town to “break free” from their confining routines.

Dive Insight:

One of the sure signs of summer is the proliferation of liquor ads on mobile apps. This season, Bacardi joins Pernod Ricard’s Malibu rum on Snapchat, while Patron Spirits is running campaigns with Foursquare and Twitter to promote its tequila brand, among others. Earlier this year, Jameson whiskey and Bud Light ran Snapchat campaigns for St. Patrick’s Day.

Bacardi’s Snapchat ad with Major Lazer is part of a stronger alliance between the brand and the band, Billboard reported. Their relationship now includes live events, such as Spirit Up in Miami, and a new brand of rum. Bacardi and Major Lazer teamed up on MusicLiberatesMusic.com, a program for subsidizing studio time for unknown Caribbean artists through Spotify. The more music people stream, the more recording time artists earn.

Meanwhile, liquor companies spent roughly $411 million on ads in the U.S. last year, according to an estimate by Kantar Media, and that figure is expected to grow as more media channels seek a cut of that spending. Brands seek a younger demographic that generally flock to mobile media, though some consumers are concerned that because the photo-sharing app's audience includes underage people, the ads would only fuel underage drinking by exposing young people to alcohol marketing online. Alcohol advertisers also say they only serve ads to people who register on Snapchat as 21 and older — although no one is checking IDs during app downloads or on smartphones in general yet. The alcohol business has had to rely on imperfect age-gating tools throughout its history, and Snapchat meets the industry’s regulations on registrations, according to AdAge.