PR Push Is On for Vodka
The guest of honor was being treated to a party at the China Club, L.A.’s new chi-chi night spot, with celebrity guests, balloons, kleig lights and a price tag of $50,000.
The guest of honor was a bottle of vodka.
Tanqueray introduced its new Sterling vodka with such a party recently, hosted by Movietime on-air personality Katie Wagner and saluting the “trend-setters of the 1980s.” The company commissioned a painting from artist/songwriter Allee Willis (an eclectic work prominently featuring Tanqueray Sterling bottles), served a chocolate cake in the shape of a Tanqueray Sterling bottle and invited actresses Justine Bateman, Katey Sagal and Lesley Ann Warren.
While product launch parties are hardly new to the social scene, the party circuit has become crowded in recent months with events hosted, underwritten or having some tie-in to imported vodkas.
An increasingly competitive market may be the reason. While hard liquor sales have dropped to the lowest point since the industry began surveying sales in 1970, sales of imported vodkas have risen (although the imports still represent a small share of the U.S. vodka market). Last year, the sale of Absolut vodka from Sweden increased by 34%.
Two of the newest entries to the field of imported vodkas are Great Britain’s Tanqueray Sterling and Icy Vodka from Iceland. Absolut dominates the market, with the Soviet Union’s Stolichnaya, Finlandia from Finland and Denaka from Denmark.
Since all vodkas are flavorless, persuading consumers that one brand is superior to another in this crowded field is in good part a matter of image and has sparked marketing creativity, highlighted by eye-popping ads (Absolut’s series of unusual bottles is one) and moving in on the glamorous social scene.
Advertising can only go so far--especially when hard liquor companies are restricted to print ads and while other pricey luxury items like perfumes and cosmetics offer sample cards in magazines, vodka can hardly follow suit.
What better way to get consumers to sample their products than by offering them at glamorous social scenes?
Companies have devised various ways of promoting their products on the party scene from underwriting charity events to donating bottles of their vodka at events to hosting theme parties that feature only their brand.
Just how prominently the product is featured at events varies from company to company and party to party. Icy supplied several bottles of its vodka at a private dinner for patrons of the Los Angeles opera. The drink was served during the first course, with waiters pouring from sleek bottles perched on trays--hardly a hard-sell.
The sell began the following day when a reporter was contacted by the company’s publicity firm, asking if the product was going to be mentioned in the party write-up (it was not), and if the publicist could call when Icy was served at subsequent parties to see if the same could be done.
Carillon Importers, which distributes Absolut, has a West Coast publicist who often shows up at parties in traffic-stopping one-of-a-kind Absolut dresses designed by Seventh Avenue’s finest, including Stephen Sprouse, Perry Ellis-label designer Marc Jacobs and Carmello Pomodoro.
“Schieffelin & Somerset (Sterling’s distributor) has traditionally relied on public relations activities like sponsoring American Ballet Theatre or other charitable events to be one of the main engines to market a brand,” says Clint Rodenberg, the company’s senior vice president of marketing. Glamorous, celebrity-filled parties are a way to associate the product with the affluent, upscale market the vodka companies are after. “Our primary audience,” says Rodenberg, “are young professional adults, 25 to 35, who make over $35,000 a year and live in metropolitan areas. If people associate Tanqueray Sterling vodka with Ally (Sheedy) and Katie (Wagner) and that young, affluent crowd, it’s a very favorable association for us.”
“The hardest sell is the first one,” says Bill Creason, senior brand manager for new products at Brown-Forman, the Louisville-based company that distributes Icy vodka.
It is word-of-mouth that Icy--which is going after the same yupscale market as the other premium vodka brands--relies upon.
“For trend-setters to adopt the product, it starts the word-of-mouth going,” says Creason. “When that works in combination with advertising and in-store promotions and having it available at bars and restaurants, then people will see it and remember it.”
Tricia Barroll found “unchartered territory” when Carillon Importers made her its West Coast publicist to promote Absolut through parties. “Basically I make sure our product is in all the appropriate parties, where we can get good exposure to the right people, and I try to get press for us” she says. “The big thrust right now is tasting. We’ve done lots of tie-ins with L. A. Style magazine because that’s a good crowd for us.”
The relationship between Absolut and L.A. Style is a mutually beneficial one.
“What makes our magazine go ‘round from a business point of view is advertising,” says L.A. Style publisher Karen Fund. “We understand that the advertiser is looking for a certain kind of buyer, not just someone who is discerning, but a trend-setter in the community. With an advertiser we can say not only can we run an ad for you, but we can get the customer much closer to you than that with an event . . . and we can get them to taste your product.”
