At a trade show late last year the Global Vodka Alliance team met the head of production at the enormous vodka company, Absolut Vodka. We quizzed Absolut’s production methods to no end, expecting a number of track-backs and disappointing answers. We got the opposite.
Absolut Vodka is taking a clear new direction with a marketing strategy based around clarity in their ingredients and production methods, as they put it; ‘The vodka with nothing to hide’.
Provenance, production and people are overtaking price and convenience when it comes to purchasing decisions in food & drink and clearly the big companies are catching on. Absolut’s new advert manages to make a vodka company producing six hundred thousand bottles a day seem like a small company producing a small batch, artesian product.
Deceptive? Yes, slightly. But smaller brands don’t need to complain.
The big companies lead the conversation simply because they have larger marketing budgets and wider reach. Consumers are smart, they know Absolut is a big company producing a hell-of-a-lot of vodka; the key here is they may now question where their vodka is from, how it’s made and who makes it.
Absolut are telling consumers to think about the ingredients, production methods and people behind a brand and when consumers do that the genuine products/brands succeed.
Considering it was only ten years ago when Absolut’s advertising was focused on putting a disco ball on the moon. Absolut should be commended for focusing their efforts towards transparency within vodka and their production techniques. We’ve gone through with a fine toothcomb their production techniques and they’ve been nothing but open and honest throughout. That’s much more than we can say for 80% of the other ‘big’ vodka brands we speak to!
At The Global Vodka Alliance we say work with big brands if they are singing from the same hymn sheet, only together can we change the way people think about vodka.
Do you think otherwise? I’d like to hear from you, send me an email at: nik@garnishcommunications.com