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Lucid absinthe is running 91 local billboards in Los Angeles and the surrounding areas, featuring the new tagline, "Lights, Camera, Absinthe...." The effort is timed with National Absinthe Day, on March 5, marking the four-year anniversary of absinthe's legalization in America. The company says Lucid constitutes 60% of U.S. absinthe consumption.
The message of the effort, the first out-of-home advertising push for Viridian Spirits and Lucid absinthe on absinthe's place in mainstream American culture. Said Jared Gurfein, President and CEO in a statement, "Since the beginning, absinthe has always had a strong connection to the arts. The goal of this campaign is for Lucid to show the local Los Angeles community -- and the spirits industry -- that absinthe is successfully growing in America and has earned its place in both the artistic and gastronomic landscape."
Finlandia Vodka has created a "Finnishing School," accessible through a special tab on its Facebook page, where fans can find videos giving cocktail-mixing lessons from famed "mixologists" such as Dale DeGroff ("King Cocktail"), formerly of New York's Rainbow Room. The app also includes a "Drink Lab" tab that pulls in information from Finlandia's MixologyArt.com, to provide users with an easy way to search drink recipes once they've learned the art of mixing.
Tequila has its own version of the generic-versus-branded problem: while tequila is the fastest-growing spirit beverage in the U.S., its growth is driven by its use as an ingredient in margaritas. So in spite of the growing popularity of higher-end tequila brands, the market here is still largely driven by whatever bottle happens to be near at hand when the blender gets powered up and salt gets shaken. Herradura, the leading premium tequila brand in Mexico -- where natives do not drink margaritas by and large -- is hoping to build on the recognition of premium tequila in the U.S. The 140-year-old brand, marketed here by Brown-Forman, wants to accelerate the acceptance of premium tequila and the recognition of the Herradura brand as its exemplar.
Among the messages the company is delivering with new marketing in the U.S. is that Casa Herradura -- which is centered on the original hacienda near Guadalajara -- still makes tequila the old way, without chemicals, added yeasts or additives like caramel coloring typically used in so-called "gold" tequilas. The hacienda doesn't add yeast because in addition to harvesting miles of blue agave, the hacienda still grows a variety of fruit crops in the valley in which it -- and the distillery -- are located. Those crops perfuse the air with some 300 varieties of airborne yeast, according to Ruben Aceves Vidrio, director of international brand development, obviating the need to pour it into the vat in powdered form.
Aceves Vidrio says that while the brand has been around a long time, it was only first sold in the U.S. in the 1960s in a shop in Chicago called La Preferida. The company has been focused on the sister brand, El Jimador. But Aceves Vidrio says the time is good to talk about Herradura because "there is more consumer acceptance of ultra-premium tequila and lots more competition."
He likens the tequila market in the U.S. to where the wine industry was 15 or 20 years ago. "Back then, few people were really that discerning when it came to quality; now, wine drinkers are very sophisticated consumers. Our hope is over time, people will become just as discerning with tequila as they are with wine today." He says tequila constitutes only about 6% of distilled spirits sales in the U.S., although it is the fastest-growing category and also the most profitable on a comparison basis, since it is twice the price in the U.S. that it is in Mexico.
The company is launching a new campaign timed to the introduction of new packaging. The older square bottle has been replaced with a new design with sharper angles, bevels and Mexican motifs. Orfilio Quintero, brand business manager for Casa Herradura, says the new bottle was also an effort to unite the packaging globally. "We had a square bottle in Mexico and a round bottle in the rest of the world," he says. "That created a lot of confusion among consumers."
The company is focusing on major markets like Miami, Dallas and other Texas cities, and California with the new campaign, "Never Compromise," including print, outdoor and cable efforts on the Plum Network, which services affluent communities like the Hamptons on Long Island. "We will do programs in New York next year and are attacking many smaller markets," says Quintero, who adds that the company distributes its products in 50 states and 130 global markets. It is also running a "Make an Intro/Win an Intro" contest offering an introduction to Football Hall of Famer Emmitt Smith. The prize includes round-trip airfare and accommodations for the winner and a guest to Dallas, where they will get to dine with the athlete. Contestants must "like" Herradura's Facebook page to submit their entry. Quintero says California is the leading state for tequila, comprising 20% of national sales -- "but it is a more discerning consumer. In San Francisco, our tequilas are used in a lot of high-end restaurants. Half of my sales on the East Coast are in New York. It's the third-largest after California and Texas," he says.
DonQ Rum is launching a digital contest dangling a trip to Puerto Rico as grand prize. The "Master of All Skills" is ultimately intended to spotlight how DonQ's distillers are masters of their particular craft.
The finalists in each of the categories get a DonQ-funded party. The person who gets the top combined score in all nine categories gets the trip to Puerto Rico -- which, among other things, includes a tour of the DonQ operation and information about rum making from one of the brand's master distillers.
Running through March, the campaign involves several social media Web sites, one for each of the areas in which consumers will compete: NotCot.com is the hub for the mixology-quiz part of the competition; BuzzFeed.com is for the humor competition; Foodspotting.com is the hub for the foodie competition; a test on humanitarian activity will be at Good.com; CoolHunting.com will house a culture battle; Instructables.com will host the do-it-yourself part of the competition; Pitchfork.com will be the music-competition venue; technology tests will be hosted by Gizmodo.com; and a romance-savvy competition will be at OkCupid.com.
Participants can start the challenge within each partner site, according to DonQ, which is distributed in the U.S. by Serralles USA. The company will advertise the program at each of the sites, thus mining each of the Web property's installed fan base. When they answer correctly in the first quiz, they will be directed to DonQ.com /MasterofAllSkills.com. Once there, they have to create a profile to finish the rest of the challenges from whichever of the nine sites they started at.
Said Clay Parker Jones, strategy director at DonQ's New York-based digital strategy firm, Undercurrent: "The experience appeals to the gamer in all of us. The feedback loops and sharing features are all designed to entice people to play."
DonQ has also mixed an SKU of rum, intended to evoke each site. San Francisco-based digital agency Odopod designed and built the "Master of All Skills" digital platform.
Bacardi Limited's 42Below vodka is the exclusive sponsor of the latest Web series on VBS.TV, the online television network of Vice, a media company that includes Vice Magazine and other properties.
The seven-webisode series, "League of Two," profiles innovative "dynamic duos" working in the fields of music, film, food, fashion and design, capturing the "agonies and ecstasies" of working in collaboration.
42Below has prominent logo adjacencies on the new series' Web area (vbs.tv/leagueoftwo), and each webisode begins with "42Below presents...". In addition, its "vodka professors" have created a special drink to be promoted in conjunction with the series sponsorship, called "The Duo" (42Below, Martini Bianco and a lemon twist).
"As a brand that celebrates independent spirit, creativity and being a bit different from the rest, 42Below vodka saw an opportunity to showcase thriving creative duos with 'League of Two,' so we jumped at it," sums up the vodka's brand director, Joe Metevier.
The first duo profiled in the series is Andy Spade and Anthony Sperduti, founders/principals in the innovative hybrid design agency Partners & Spade, located in Manhattan's NoHo district. Other duos profiled include the principals in electro-pop lifestyle band YACHT, the menswear line Duckie Brown; architecture/designed space firm Roman & Williams; "culinary architecture" firm Bompas & Parr; and the electrofunk band Chromeo.
42Below, a premium vodka manufactured in New Zealand, was launched in 1998 and acquired by Bacardi Limited in 2006. Now distributed in more than 25 countries, its name refers to both its alcohol content and the 42nd latitudinal parallel that falls near its manufacturing site.
Millennials are already redefining the alcoholic beverages marketplace, and their distinctive behaviors and attitudes will have an even more pronounced impact going forward, confirms Nielsen's Millennial Study. These consumers, currently ages 21 to 34, will make up fully 40% of Americans 21 and older within 10 years, making it increasingly critical f or alcoholic beverage marketers to understand their tastes and buying preferences, point out Danny Brager and Jim Greco, respectively VP/group client director and VP, region manager for Beverage Alcohol at Nielsen, in a summary of study highlights. One key differentiator: Compared to the general population, Millennials are more open to exploring new and different alcoholic beverage products. While the majority still prefer beer, they purchase relatively more wine and spirits than older generations did at a comparable age. Thus, while consumers traditionally have tended to show a relative shift from beer to wine and spirits as they age and their lifestyles change, Millennials' future consumption patterns are less predictable. "Millennials' tendency to experiment and try new things will keep them versatile, skipping among a variety of alcoholic beverages," note Brager and Greco. One example: These consumers are more likely to buy locally made products, partly to support their local economies. Millennials also are more likely to equate product cost with quality, and more likely to trade back up to more expensive alcoholic beverage brands as the economy improves, the study shows. At the same time, in the currently challenged economy, they are slightly more likely to plan their purchases rather than buy on impulse -- pointing to opportunities to influence their decisions through media. And not surprisingly, the findings confirm that leveraging social media will be critical to Millennial marketing strategies, both to influence them through engagement and to keep alcoholic beverage brands relevant in their perception. Multiculturalism plays a major role in marketing to Millennials. By 2036, most consumers age 21 and older will be multicultural. "Hispanics, in particular, are swelling the ranks of these newer legal drinking age consumers" -- and their tastes are influenced by cultural factors such as degree of acculturation, as well as their generation's openness to experimentation and to being influenced by the opinions and suggestions of other consumers, point out the Nielsen executives. "Understanding how Millennials' product preferences may change as they age, while at the same time recognizing the alcohol beverage buying habits of younger, ethnic consumers will be essential for alcohol beverage companies to future-proof their portfolios," they sum up. The results of the Millennial study, conducted to gain insights on this generation as alcoholic beverage consumers, reflect survey responses from 7,500 consumers age 21 to 34, geographically and demographically representative of the total U.S. population. Conducted in second-quarter 2010, the survey probed attitudes, behaviors, lifestyles and media and retail preferences. Nielsen's analysis is based on a qualitative and quantitative research examining dynamics such as consumer attitudes, behavior, lifestyle, media and retail preferences to gain insight into Millennials as alcohol beverage consumers. Conducted in second-quarter 2010, the research included online survey responses from 7,500 consumers age 21 to 34, who are geographically and demographically representative of the total U.S. population.
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