Cabana Boys has hit upon a timely, albeit cheeky spin on political bitterness in a new campaign for Angostura. Underpinning the creative is the concept that it's not a bad thing to be a little bitter.

The launch of the print campaign was a year to the day after Kevin Rudd's deposition as Prime Minister and capitalises upon an upswell of political bitterness in the current environment with a laconic humour.

Stuart Ghent, creative partner with Cabana Boys said it was a fun job making jokes at the expense of politicians.
"With any tactical campaign, you need certain things. You need an issue or event out there laying the ground for you.  You need a product with a relevant connection to it.  You need a client who is open to taking a chance.  And you need an idea that’s a little bit of fun," he said.
"We were lucky.  We had all the planets aligning perfectly. So when we came to cracking this brief, the ads nearly wrote themselves."

With Rudd's assertion that he is no longer bitter - and a Liberal party ad campaign depicting Rudd and Julila Gillard as lemons and Bob Brown as a lime – there was plenty of grist for the creative mill according to Nathan Forde, national marketing manager of Angostura’s Australian distributor, island2island Beverage Company.

"The authentic Angostura Lemon, Lime & Bitters is a quintessentially Australian drink. In fact, Lemon, Lime and Bitters were invented here. It’s not a dry, negative political thing, it's fun and refreshing," he said.

"What better time to get that message out than now, when cynical forces are hi-jacking lemons, limes and bitterness for very dusty purposes."

The Cabana Boys campaign includes three print ads depicting the Angostura Lemon, Lime & Bitters pre-mixed bottle and a  headline aimed at reclaiming L,L&B as a positive thing, such as Hey Kev, a little bitterness can be quite refreshing and Kev, it’s okay to be a little bitter.

The campaign follows an earlier politically-flavoured campaign featuring Modern Family actor, Sofia Vergara, as the Minister for Pronouncement on a mission to educate Australians on the correct pronunciation of Angostura.