The twelfth blog: Bokma

Today I decided to analyze a local brand (for me). It’s called Bokma and comes from The Netherlands. You probably noticed I am dutch by my incoherent rambling before, alas feel free to make childish comments about legal weed and clogs in the comments below.

Bokma. The name comes from the surname of the Bokma family. Freerk Klazes Bokma was granted permission to establish a distillery on De Tuinen in Leeuwarden in 1894. He operated this business in addition to his bakery shop. This is where Bokma was destilled for many years.

Bokma has a rich history when it comes to advertising which I will talk about in this blog. In 1900 Pieter Bokma recognised the importance of advertising your brand. The company’s financial records show that Pieter invested heavily in advertising from the very beginning. Bottles and crates were labelled ‘P.Bokma, distillateur, Leeuwarden’ and, from 1904, simply ‘P.Bokma, Leeuwarden’. The importance of advertising increased after World War II. The advertising of Bokma Genever received increasingly more attention after the takeover by Heineken, resulting in several memorable advertising slogans, like: “Bokma, the best thing under the cork”, “Square in the bottle, round on the tongue” and ” Sweetheart, is the Bokma cold?”.

Commercial:

In this commercial we see a man which car is broken. He pushes it towards the nearest telephone cell and the when you think he is about to call for help, he calls his wife and says “Schat, staat de Bokma koud?” which is dutch for the aformentioned slogan “Sweetheart, is the Bokma cold?”. The humor in this commercial is that nobody thinks about Bokma when he has a car breakdown and this man does. He puts his worries about his Bokma getting warm before actually seeking help with his car.

The eleventh blog: Disaronno

Today we are going to analyze a liquor brand called Disaronno. Disaronno comes from Italy and was originally called ” Amaretto di Saronno” which means “Amaretto from Saronno”, which is where Disaronno is still made today. For marketing reasons, however, the name was changed to “Disaronno Originale”.

I’ve drank Disaronno myself and it tastes a bit like the dutch “bitterkoekjes” and is very nice to mix with cola. When we load the official site we already see what Disaronno is all about. The burning Italian passion of men for women and visa versa. It’s the perfect drink to drink with your lover. The site has an overall slick design, perfectly mirroring what makes Italian brands so great, temptation (just look at brands like Ferrari). The site contains smoking hot women and wealthy, independent men which women probably find superattractive too. A big letdown is that the ENTIRE site is Italian and there is no option to change the language to English. So I guess it is true, those Italians are pretty arrogant snobs. Well I have to analyze a commercial than, but don’t worry Disaronno I still like to drink you….

In this commercial we see some cool bartender and an italiana with a very tight ponytail (that must really hurt) and her friends. They order of course *SUPRISE* Disaronno and the bartender pours it into their glasses while saying the names of the tastes in the predictable James Bond-esque low voice. The women orders Disaronno on ice and the bartender looks her into the eyes in a tempting way and pours it into here glass. The women takes the glass and sniffs the Disaronno like she is a great Amaretto expert. She laughs with her friends and puts the empty glass back on the bar. The bartender takes the glass and she puts her hand on his hand and he looks at her. Then the magic happens, she takes an ice cube and chews on it in a very sensual, sexy way. The bartender looks like he is about to jizz his pants any moment and the commercial ends with her laughing with her friends and an outro shot of Disaronno.

This commercial really shows what Disaronno is about, temptation. It’s nothing like Jägermeister or Southern Comfort. This drinks wants to take you on a ride of passion and flirting.

The tenth blog: Goldstrike

Goldstrike is a popular dutch beverage with cinnamon flavor and 24-karat gold snippets and an individual drinking method: “Shake, Shoot and Strike”. The liquid tastes like cinnamon candy.

A fun marketingtrick of Gold Strike is that the flasks contain flakes of 23.5 karat gold, which explain the “gold” part from the name. The gold flakes present little health risk. Some people believe that Gold Strike’s gold flakes cut the throat or stomach upon ingestion, allowing the alcohol to directly enter the bloodstream for quicker intoxication. This rumor can be direct to the land of fables, because gold is known for its softness and malleability, and given that the flakes do not have sharp edges, no such things occur and this rumor is clearly false.

Gold Strike’s marketing theme is the american wild-west around 1849 and the site clearly says so. The beverage is drunk pure by first shaking your shotglass with a coin on it, then drink it up in 1 take and at last strike your shotglass on he bar.

It is clear that Gold Strike uses a quite original marketing strategy for a dutch liquor brand. Nobody does something like this alike in Holland and it reminds of American Marketing (which is a few years ahead). Gold Strike has a high alcohol percentage of 50% and does a great job on taking you to the wild, wild-west of the good ol’ days.

The ninth blog: Cointreau

This one is about the drink with the easy to remind name, Cointreau. Seriously say this five times in a row and you spew your breakfast all over your keyboard and your cheeks fall off from exhaustion. But let’s keep my opinion about the name in my giant little fortress called: “my mind”. Set tight y’all because I’m about to survey the brand: Cointreau!

How did they get that lame name anyway, you might ask yourself. Well that’s easy to seek out: “Cointreau Distillery was set up in 1849 by Adolphe Cointreau, a confectioner, and his brother Edouard-Jean Cointreau from Angers. Their first success was with the cherry liqueur, guignolet, but it was when they concocted a blend of sweet and bitter orange peels and pure alcohol from sugar beets that the success of the enterprise was definitively confirmed”. Wikipedia again, owns all. The name is the surname from the founder.

With that sorted out we can now continue. Cointreau’s slogan is: “Be cointreauversial” as is seen on the official site. The drink is obviously not centered around people in their twenties like other drinks I talked about earlier. This one is for people in their thirties / fourties that don’t care about what others think, the slogan proves that. Cointreau also says that you can use their liquor in your cooking recipes. That’s pretty original and not every beverage does that. The drink has it’s origins in France and it is seen in the overall campagnes of the drink, like: “Voules-vous Cointreau avec moi”.

The drink is now more centered around elegant, expressional women. You can see this because the new brand ambassador is Dita von Teese, which is a pretty elegant women.

The eight blog: Jägermeister

I hope you have enjoyed from my first blog. This blog is about Jägermeister. This originally German liguor contains 35% of alcohol. I promise you, it gives a real hangover the follow morning.

The name comes from a term introduced in 1934 in the “Reich hunting law”. The term was applied to senior foresters and gamekeepers in Germany. Curt Mast, the inventor of Jägermeister, was an hunter, so that’s where the name comes from.

When you look to the logo you will see a cross and a reindeer both, rare things for to use in a logo. The typical things makes the logo authentic and original. The color of the drink is red. The color of the bottle of the drink is green with a white label on the front. At the label see you the logo and the name of the drink: Jägermeister.

The drink tastes cold the best. I prefer to drink on cold winter nights and these colors really represent the German feel of the drink, this is not a drink for the summer.

Before I go the website of Jägermeister, I must answer on the question: What’s your birthday and country of residence? The website promotes responsible drinking. You read at the top of the website the follow famous sense: ‘’Geniet, maar drink met mate’’ also ‘’enjoy drinking, but drink in moderation.

In this commercial we see three nice looking ladies who order Jägermeister into a cold looking bar. The bartender clearly likes them and serves them 3 shots of Jägermeister. When the girls drinking, their nipples turn extremely hard, because Jägermeister is such a cold liquor. Jägermeister’s point clearly comes across… This drink let’s you experience the power of the German winter and the brand positions itself for people who are in their twenties as you can see by the people who play a role in this commercial.

The seventh blog: Crown royal

\For the next weblog i’m going to talk about a really luxurious whisky, named Crown Royal. This one is not available in the Netherlands and most drinked by Americans and Canadians (as it was founded in Canada). But still a fun brand to talk about nonetheless.

Let’s take a look at how Diageo (the manufacturer) positions her drink in the whisky market. Crown Royal is a really, really exclusive whiskey. The name speaks for itself, it’s a whiskey mainly for people which huge amounts of money and kings and queens. My jaw falls down on the floor when I look at the bottle design… This ladies and gentlemen is how you make your drink exclusive. The bottle looks really loyal and is pretty decorated. A real piece of art, even when empty. Crown Royal’s slogan is: “For every king, a crown.”. Crown Royal positions itself as a drink which is a reward for people who made it through their hard work and want to celebrate that, the slogan shows this.

Now let’s go to the website. Of course it opens with the traditional agegate. After filling in your age it takes you to the homepage. The homepage says: “Crown Royal: Society of the Crown” which, again, proves how luxurious this drink is. You can also see here that Crown Royal sponsors a NASCAR racer named Matt Kenseth. An interesting, original choice. You can even inscribe a personal message for someone you care about on a Crown Royal bag or bottle label, which shows America and Canada ar far beyond Europe and our ways of marketing. The website also list some “Masters of Whiskies” which are people who work as blenders for Crown Royal and tells you their story.

The sixth blog: Smirnoff

Today I’m going to analyse Smirnoff for you. Smirnoff is a rather well-known vodka brand and distributed in 130 countries. In March 2006, Diageo North America claimed that Smirnoff vodka was the best-selling distilled spirit brand in the world which is quite an achievement. When you go to their site it’s said everywhere “#1 Vodka this, #1 Vodka that”. The facebook page describtion says something about how Smirnoff positions herself : “This is where restless minds, rebellious hearts and dreamers from around the world gather to share their extraordinary moments and inspire new acts that subvert the everyday”. So this drink is probably for people who have “rebellious hearts” and are “dreamers”, probably everyone feels related to that…

Well so this drink has a pretty broad audience. It’s also quite interesting to note that Smirnoff’s colors red and white are used everywhere where Smirnoff is, be it Facebook, Twitter etc. Thanks to Smirnoff being so broad I have pretty much nothing remarkable to say about it. So I’m just going to analyse a commercial then, this one is going to be pretty fun to do so that’s a relief:

In this commercial we see a man at a wedding. He sits down a table and looks through a Smirnoff glass that is standing there. While looking he sees all kinds of weird, crazy things. First he sees the bride kiss her husband, but when he’s looking through the glass he sees her eating him. Secondly he sees the gifts for the just married couple, when he looks through the bottle he sees that a monster erupts out of one of the gifts. After that he sees a women which dress decoration turns into bugs. He sees guys staring at a women’s ass and one of them turns into a condor. He sees a man politely kisses a women’s hand and when the bottle gets before it he is passionately kissing her hand. He sees a fat guy turn into a walrus, a man with women lingerie and last but not least, he looks at himself in the mirror and when he does the Smirnoff bottle in front of it he morphs into a devil. The commercial ends with an outro shot of a Smirnoff bottle and Smirnoff-filled Cola glasses.

The fifth blog: Heineken

Today I’m going to analyse the most famous beer in the Netherlands en perhaps all over the world. Yes, I mean Heineken. Heineken is the best selling beer in the Netherlands at this moment. Well, I start by the history of Heineken. On the night of June 30^th1863, Gerard Adriaan Heineken wrote a letter to his Mother, he was planning to buy a brewery in Amsterdam. Heineken wanted to introduce a beer culture in Amsterdam and later in rest of the Netherlands, he succeeded.

Gerard Heineken was in love with France and wanted to introduce his beer in Paris. For a World’s fair Heineken built a pavilion with a five-pointed star. That time people recognized Heineken beer from the star. Everywhere Heineken beer was made, the green label was embossed with five-pointed star.

Gerard Heineken has one son, Henry Pierre. He took the leadership over in 1914. Under his leadership the brand moved away from being a national company to an international company. The company grew and Heineken beer was sold in many different countries. Since 1940 the companies used the advertising for more sales. With Alfred Heineken the son from Henry, Heineken lead a small revolution. The management believed before this moment, a good products sells itself. Alfred Heineken was going on sale with the brand.

In 1968 the happy letter ‘’e’’ was born in the brand name, the logo was made prominent and Heineken have made his first TV commercial. On this point Heineken is sponsoring many festivals, sports, the Olympics etc. The brand Heineken is famous from TV commercials, they have made many funny commercials. The most commercials got about a recognizable situation in our lives.

In the following commercial you see a typical situation. The name of the TV commercial: It’s a men’s dream to have it at home.

The fourth blog: Johnnie Walker

This masterpiece is going to be about the liquor brand Johnnie Walker. It originated in Scotland and is owned by Diageo. It is the most widely distributed brand of blended Scotch whisky in the world, sold in almost every country with yearly sales of over 130 million bottles. The name comes from the scotch legacy Johnnie Walker and it was originally known as Walker’s Kilmarnock Whisky. The brand was renamed by James Stevenson in 1908 to the name we now all know and he also introduced the “Striding Man” in honor to the founder (he did not draw it though).

The brand is probably also famous because of it’s labels, notably black label, green label, gold label and red label. Every type of Johnnie Walker scotch has a label colour, except for the Swing label. The purpose is to denote the different type of scotch and to position them to be used for different occasions. For example, Johnnie Walker Blue Label is rare and expensive, thus it can only be used in rare occasions.

Also important to a Johnnie Walker bottle is the Striding Man logo I mentioned before. It was created in 1908 by an illustrator named Tom Browne to be a likeness of John Walker in traditional attire. In the logo, the man is walking forward, which Diageo says symbolises forward thinking and the pursuit for excellence. Diageo has also created “The Striding Man Society” which is a members club for people who drink Johnnie Walker.

Another key aspect of Johnnie Walker marketing is the slanted label. This was an advertising tool developed by Alexander Walker (Johnnie’s son) who thought it would help his bottles stand out on the shelf. It might be fun to note that each label is angled at exactly 24 degrees, not every liquor brand pays this much attention to small things like this.

The third blog: Malibu

Hello readers,

This next entry is about Malibu. Malibu is a rum made in Barbados with natural coconut extract. It contains 21% alcohol. The brand is owned by Pernod Ricard, who bought it from Diageo.

Malibu’s advertising motto is “Seriously easy going” and quite often feature people from the Caribbean taking life seriously, ridiculing the stress associated with the Western urban lifestyle, with a voiceover at the end saying “If people in the Caribbean took life as seriously as this, they would never have invented Malibu. It’s seriously easy going.” The marketing department of Malibu Rum nowadays mainly focuses on marketing Malibu Rum’s online streaming audio station known as RadioMaliBoomBoom.com.

The Malibu website is obviously centered towards people from age 16 to 26. You can see this by the casual language they use on the site, it’s different than for example, Cointreau. Malibu also focuses on stealth marketing with Malibu groups on the social network site Hyves that you can befriend. Minuses about the site are that it is pretty messy, but that’s probably done on purpose to get the Carribean feeling across. It is also possible to subscribe to a Malibu newsletter, so that Malibu keeps you in touch with the latest Malibu news, a great way to remind consumers to buy your product.

The second blog: Jack Daniel’s

Jack Daniel’s is a traditional brand of whiskey, which is destillated in Lynchburg, Tennessee in the United States. The beverage is 135 countries. currently sold in The distillery was founded in 1866 by Jasper Newton (Jack) Daniel that was born around 1850 in a family of 13 kids. Daniel got his whiskey license at the age of 16 and was the very first distiller that was registered in the American traderegister (although there is some debate about that, because his birth records where destroyed in a fire). When Jack Daniel died in 1911 his distillery was taken over by his nephew Lem Motlow, which company still sells the brand to this very day.

For it’s marketing Jack Daniel’s relies on it’s rich story about the legendary figure Jack Daniel and the environment in which it was crafted, Tennessee. The drink is well-known by it’s black label and square bottle. One of the stories tells that the recipe for Jack Daniel’s was the 7th recipe Mr. Jack (as he is called by his staff) had tried. This is listed on the label because it always says “Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 Brand”.

The Jack Daniel’s distillery is registered in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places and can be visited by the public, it was added to it’s registers in September 14, 1972.

The first blog: Southern Comfort

Well, let’s start.

I write a blog about alcoholic beverages. I want to tell you about the brand, commercial, the creators, logo etc. I like beer and hard liquor and drink it often in the weekend. It’s fun for me to analyse how all those beers and liquor companies categorize their brand in the market. From Heineken to Jagermeister, I’m going to analyse all their strategies in the upcoming blogs.

For today i’m going to analyse a liquor I drink myself, it’s called “Southern Comfort”. This baby can get you wasted in no time and it mixes very well with Coca-Cola (yes, i’m talking about experience here). I’m going to sum up some facts of this brand and analyse a commercial (if it is available). I hope this topic is relevant, original and interesting. I sure will be having some fun writing about this! 

Let’s start with typing in the web address of the official site in my address bar. Great, it asks for my age! Nothing is better than to keep foulish, little children of hard liquor. Of course this little age gate can be easily tricked by setting the year to anything before 1992, but at least they tried, didn’t they? Hey, what’s this! I can login with my Facebook? That’s a pretty nice web 2.0 integrated website, Southern Comfort! My interest has certainly been raised. Ok, now let’s enter the site. Let’s start by saying this site breaths the southern image of Southern Comfort, New Orleans to be more precise. They have worked to keep the site pretty simple and on-topic. No annoying little banners and everything is loaded very quickly.

When I load the ‘History’ page, i’m linked to a build-in Wikipediapage of Southern Comfort. Doesn’t fit the relaxing image of the site at all and I think it’s a pretty lazy solution. But let’s be really honest here, who is nowadays going to read all this history nonsense, nobody wants to read through walls of text in their freetime. Twitter and Facebook is where it’s at and Southern Comfort understands that, they have both of these little goldmines build-in ready for the consumer to follow and explore. Both pages include a couple of smart, witty oneliners posted for the one and only reason to remind the customers about what they should be drinking their next weekend.

The website also has a page with the different kinds of products Southern Comfort offers including witty oneliners to each product, these products are Southern Comfort, Southern Comfort 100 Proof (a stronger version of the beverage), Southern Comfort Special Reserve (more expensive, exclusive bottle), Southern Comfort Lime (Lime taste), Southern Comfort Lemonade (Lemonade version), Southern Comfort Sweet Tea (it probably tastes like tea), Southern Comfort Hurricane (Cocktail version) Southern Comfort Lemonade & Lime and Southern Comfort & Cola which both speak for themselves. A wide variety of tastes as you can see, ready to traded for money from the alcohol hungering masses.

All in all I think Southern Comfort does a pretty good job at getting their message across, enjoy life and embrace time with your friends (with Southern Comfort). It’s a beacon for the relaxing southern spirit as you can see in the commercial below