If alcoholic beverages endeavor to embody or influence particular lifestyles, then 10 Cane Rum is kind of like that cultured, eccentric guy who can successfully pull off whimsical striped socks or a foppish hat without seeming like he's trying too hard.

That's certainly the tone of Mother, New York's launch campaign for the premium rum brand, with an aesthetic that draws heavily on French New Wave cinema and a humorous narrative primarily derived from the easy-going real lives of various Trinidadians.

What's most striking about the campaign is that it doesn't look like any other beverage advertising that we've seen recently.

That, says Mother creative director Linus Karlsson, was the point. Because the agency got involved with 10 Cane, which is owned by Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, at the development stages of the brand identity, they were given a great deal of latitude to be different. "It's a new brand and it didn't have any history or visuals attached to it."

Never ones to play it straight, Mother shot for the stars. Touting 10 Cane's homeland of Trinidad as the Kingdom of Rum, calling the new campaign Rum's Redemption and featuring a series of Super Premium Films, it's a wonder anyone at the agency can keep a straight face - that's assuming they can, of course.

The result is a black and white travelogue for Trinidad. A series of 18 short 30- to 50-second films, a beautiful print and outdoor campaign shot by photographer Lars Topelmann and word-generated website, the entire project shows off Trinidad and its people in an affectionate and playful way.

Creative partners Todd Lamb and Sean Carmody say they presented the client with one sheet of paper that established the personality of the product. It was "kind of like a humorous pondering and also very grounded in real life," says copywriter Lamb. "Sometimes profound and sometimes stupid." Adds Carmody, the art director of the pair: "Visually, we wanted to take the idea of how rum was this classic drink in the '50s and '60s and juxtapose it with this quirky tone and voice we'd established."

Naturally, the campaign was shot in Trinidad. Karlsson says it began as a "modest journey to create a catalogue of imagery for the brand". The initial idea was simply to shoot a print campaign, but Karlsson brought a 16mm camera that he wanted to try out. "It was more of an experiment", he says, but they ended up with so much footage after 12 days of shooting that in addition to the nine films released this July, there are plans for a second volume this year. A high-end magazine featuring back stories on the people and some of the over 5,000 photographs was also released in late-July.

The fact that Karlsson ended up being the ad hoc director for the campaign was not the only happy accident along the way. Most of the casting - which is the absolute backbone and heart of the films - also came by happenstance. Karlsson says they held a small casting session, which then extended to friends and so on. Two groups of main characters emerged - older guys who were employees of the 10 Cane distillery and younger ones that he calls the next generation of cool.

One of those younger ones, a fellow known quite seriously as Sir Royalty was originally hired as the creative team's security guard. "He was a philosopher," says Carmody. "He filled the world around him with his thoughts, and he would write down his ideas and laminate them."

"He was also a comedian," says Lamb, "that's why we made him our bodyguard. He would just write down jokes on a piece of paper and hand them to me. A lot of them were incorporated in the films."

The comically suave Sir Royalty also plays a security guard in one of the films where, while flanked by lovely ladies with cocktail in hand, he calls in backup to control an impromptu 'dancing situation'. In another, one of the 10 Cane elders, Clyde, is charged with quality controlling every 100th bottle of rum, which he does by sitting in the surf. And in yet another film, two elders attempt to fertilize the cane crop with one part accordion solo and one part knock-knock jokes. The humor - a straight delivery of ludicrous lines in French with English subtitles - is very much reminiscent of classic Godard. And as an added bonus, anyone with an ear for the Français will quickly notice that the subtitles and narration have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

All of this, say Lamb and Carmody, was done to present 10 Cane as a premium product without being too slick and glossy. "This is not your standard premium product," Lamb says. "We had an interest in keeping it elegant, but also keeping it really low-fi. The client wanted to make something good, but they weren't trying to be fancy pants, even though it's a luxurious product."

Adds Karlsson, who credits the outcome of the campaign to the client's openness and honesty: "Hopefully it has its own tonality. On the one hand it's beautiful and charming, but it has a particular humor to it."

Mother> www.mothernewyork.com
10 Cane> www.10cane.com