An Absolut World

Ironically, Alcohol seems to have relevance in almost any circumstance these days. I suppose in an "absolute world" people could fend off the stresses of their job, relationships, classes, what have you with the push of a button or by draining themselves in the depths of a bottle with minimal consequence. However we all know it isn't generally good social practice to bust out a bottle of vodka and start taking shots in the middle of a business meeting. I mean usually we call those people drunks. I don't think that's what Absolut Vodka was necessarily going for either with their new image/ campaign style "An Absolut World"... but all the same, the new campaign (which we talked about in class- with one of the video commercials we posted a few weeks ago featuring the european pillow fight) is causing quite a stir for Absolut in terms of brand imaging and a favorable spike in their sales numbers.
With the brand's breaking from their normal image (which since its birth in 1979 consisted of print-centered ad campaigning whose ads played off of interesting visual metaphors and visual distortions that somehow featured the shape of a bottle of Absolut vodka camouflaged within some other emotionally projecting brand-related image or object), they have solidly embarked a pathway that is for many companies with strong pre-existing brand images very hard to do. They have shed their old image in favor of a continental shift, and supposedly it's working. Case shipments of the vodka have jumped 9%. They also broke the 5 million mark in case shipments for the year for the first time,which is a very credible mark in the alcohol industry. None of this of course came cheap. Sales totals aren't completely tabulated but it's estimated that Absolut spend around 16.3 million dollars for the first 9 months of the new campaign.
To tackle the article from a media-planning perspective - Absolut completely changed their predominately print-based advertising campaign of almost 30 years in favor of cable TV spots like the one we saw in class with the pillow fights. The article talks about just how big of a change this was for the company. To coincide with the change in media venue, and the fact that the new campaign slogan is "An Absolut World," obviously a play on words/the idea of an absolute world where everyone gets what they want, the brand filled airport taxi lines with Porches in Germany, boasted an ATM that actually gave out free money, and wrapped their Vegas casino with the words "Welcome to Vegas. You are now in an Absolut world." Not a bad strategy in terms of ambient advertising and TV spots - indicating not only a major change in media but also one that accurately coincided with the brand's changing image, and IT'S WORKING! I thought this was an interesting example of rare strategic success in an abosutely (no pun intended) saturated market, not to mention the fact that to reinvent a brand image requires the considerations of the brand's history, current market, target market, and changing everything including the planning, to impact real change for advertising, and real change in market value. This is something I think many companies really fail to grasp. It can be the reason why so many of them fail to advertise with effective messages that match the strength of their brand (Coca Cola comes to mind). The other cool strategy is the locations chosen by the company such as Vegas and Germany. Clearly they were going global, going big, and picking the right places - like Vegas (where the new campaign slogan accurately reflects the image of the city as a whole). It's just like our slides: Media objectives are designed to accomplish advertising objectives which must in turn fulfill marketing objectives. Absolut is making that happen across all boards at the moment.