In 2008, the iPhone arrived and quietly made the rules of the web irrelevant. 42Below’s site at the time was an award-winning all-Flash experience: stunning to look at, painful to maintain, and completely inaccessible on mobile. With a global brand that relied on digital to punch above its weight, staying on Flash wasn’t an option.
The rebuild launched in 2009. The goal wasn’t just a new coat of paint. It was to make the site something the team could actually own: updated weekly, optimised for search, and ready for whatever came next.
The brief
42Below had always used digital unusually well for a drinks brand: irreverent, story-led, and quick to try things others wouldn’t. The brief was to preserve that character while shifting to a platform that could support it long-term. Content had to become a first-class citizen: news, events, cocktail recipes, brand stories. The site needed to work as a hub for global digital projects, not just a brochure.
What we built
The site was rebuilt on WordPress: open architecture, easy to extend, and something the team could update without agency involvement. All artwork was redeveloped to match the current brand. The cocktail recipe finder, All Shook Up, let visitors filter by flavour, occasion, and style to find their next drink, a feature that would have taken weeks to update on the old platform and now took minutes.
The results came quickly. Bounce rate dropped from 27% to 3%. Six months after launch, the site was seeing 15% more visitors. New content went up at least weekly. The open platform meant new features could be developed at minimal cost, which mattered, because the team had ambitions.
42Relief
The new architecture made campaigns like 42Relief possible. Built with Ilizz and PocketVouchers for Christmas, the idea was to let New Zealanders send their friends in the UK a cocktail redeemable at participating bars, and vice versa: a way to bring some relief to a cold British winter. Visitors entered a recipient’s number, paid for a cocktail, and a text with a unique redemption code went to their phone. The campaign ran with extensive online and print advertising across Kia Ora, Metro, and others.
What I owned
- Project management across agencies Ilizz and Glad-Eye, and internal stakeholders
- Art direction and sign-off on all redesigned brand assets
- Copywriting across the site
- Budget oversight throughout build and launch
- PR and advertising for the 42Relief campaign
The project earned a five-page review in Net magazine and a feature in the WordPress Showcase.