The less time is left before Christmas, the more campaign and projects roll out to celebrate one of the most waited holidays of the year around the globe. But on November 12, Smirnoff shifted the attention of global audience to another large-scale event, announced back in August. The world’s number one selling vodka arranged a series ‘swapped’ parties across the globe as part of The Smirnoff Nightlife Exchange Project, which also included an exclusive international high-profile dance competition to select one major winner to join Madonna’s dance crew.

Photo: www.gettyimages.com, The Smirnoff Nightlife Exchange Project 2011 party in NYC

Building on the success of the last year’s initiative, the brand expanded the project to 50 countries (including Guatemala, Paraguay, Cameroon, Jamaica, New Zealand, Canada, Thailand, Trinidad, Serbia, Bulgaria, Vietnam and more), taking the nightlife experiences, shaped and collected to the special grate by people, to different locations on the same day, November 12. Smirnoff fans were asked to share their most incredible ‘Be There’ ideas (fashion, cocktails, technology, music, settings, etc.), which were then sent to another country (or even to another continent), which also made a nod of courtesy with their own ‘hand collected’ grate.

In this global movement, Germany swapped nightlife experiences with Brazil, and Great Britain exchanged the party components with Jamaica, and Argentina paired with Turkey, sharing their unique culture spirit and style. For instance, in Australia, which swapped with Italy, the party was designed as Giuseppe Verdi’s three act opera Un Ballo in Maschera (‘A Masked Ball’): “ The event was brought to life with three key ‘Acts,’ Una Discoteca in Maschera, and at midnight all guests wore silver masquerade masks as fireworks fell from the stage and Opera singers, Aerial performers and dancers wearing Venetian masquerade costumes,” says the brand. The events got a hilarious line-up of superstar talent including Kelis, CSS, Basement Jaxx, Alex Gaudino to name but a few, and collectively they performed 200 hours of music with 3,000 tracks during just one night. As to the social media component, Smirnoff fans have uploaded over 8,000 pictures from the events to Facebook and ‘liked’ Smirnoff cocktails 5,000 times using onsite RFID technology.

At The Smirnoff Nightlife Exchange party in New York, which received the grate from the Netherlands, Madonna and her choreographers Rich and Tone Talauega selected the winner of the dancing competition out of 11 finalists, who came to the event to show that they can bring yet more life to Madonna’s dancing crew on her next tour—finally, the celebrity and her advisors named Lil Buck from Memphis, TN the winner of the global contest. According to the press release, the collaboration between Madonna and her partner Live Nation and Diageo, The Smirnoff Co’s parent, will be taken even further in the coming months.