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