Build & Engrave your brand’s creative positioning: lessons from a 141-year-old brand
Now, a premium brand valued at €5.63 billion
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To tell this tale, we will have to travel back in time, to the year 1979.
The year Heath Ledger was born, the year when the Sahara desert experienced snow for 30 min, the year ESPN launched and the year which changed everything for Absolut, forever.
Why should you read this article?
The reasoning behind Absolut’s advertising campaign will enable you to understand and implement your communication tactics in resonance to your positioning, impacting your brand to differentiate and engrave your brand’s creative positioning.
It will help your brand to differentiate, stand out of the herd and build a loyal consumer base.
Every advertising book/magazine/blog/website/podcast has talked about the advertising campaigns executed by Absolut which lasted for more than 25 years with the same principal core strategy.
Today, we are going to take a detour from the conventional narration of the absolut campaign, rather we will look into why it worked the way it did.
Introduction
Absolut was established as a business in 1879 by L.O. Smith in Sweden. Absolut tapped on the liquor market and the habitual drinking of Swedes by creating an outstanding product and promising purity.
The promise of purity was fairly adequate to persuade Swedes to become a part of the Absolut revolution. Absolut entered the United States of America in 1979, a potential yet highly competitive market.
Absolut sold 10,000 cases in 1980, the sole promise of purity wasn’t enough, the importance of positioning and advertising kicked in. Over the years, Absolut has engraved its positioning as a creative brand with a following of artistic community.
Let’s uncover how this played out!
I. Absolut’s Campaign ( what they did )
Absolut became an iconic bottle when it piqued the interest of Andy Warhol, who created Absolut’s famous print campaign in 1986.
According to the Absolut Book:
“Over dinner one night, Warhol tells Michel [Roux] that he’s enthralled by the artfulness of the Absolut bottle. He reminds him that while he doesn’t drink alcohol, he sometimes uses Absolut as a perfume . . . Warhol proposes painting his own interpretation of the Absolut Vodka bottle . . . When Warhol was finished, [Roux] loved it and thought it would make a great Absolut ad.”
The next 25 years would see 1,500 variations of the ad created for the brand and it would take the company global.
Some of the ways Absolut communicated these artistic expressions were:
a. Creative ads around artistic packaging:
The creative ads centred around the medical apothecary Absolut bottle was how it started and remained the centre-piece of Absolut marketing for 25 years.
The creative ads were divided into various categories like places, seasons, flavours, spoofs etc. for resonating with the audience and creating easy brand recall.
Absolut also created a series of ads created and inspired by artists, paving its way into the artistic community.
In the US alone they saw a rise of 10,000 cases sold in 1980 to 4.5million cases in 2000.
They made up more than half of the imported brands to the entirety of the US.
b. Absolut Nights — created unforgettable brand experiences.
Over the course of 4 weeks in 2014, Absolut transformed Nightlife by launching their global experiential nightlife program Absolut Nights.
Four epic transformative nightlife experiences infused with Art were organised in 4 different cities around the globe.
New York, Johannesburg, Berlin and Sao Paulo.
Each experience transformed a different aspect of the party — from the disco ball to the dance floor.
c. Collaborated with Artists to Create Art Bars
Absolut partners up with artists around the globe to create Art Bars.
These pop-up art bars are located around the world and feature Absolut’s logo and alcohol.
“A Grain of Sand” Art Bar by Caravan features a desert landscape installation built from recycled cardboard and paper materials. Caravan is composed of artists such as Ivan Parati, Mohammad Shameel and Emanuela Corti.“Absolut offered us the incredible opportunity to fully immerse ourselves in the project and develop a complete concept from the furniture to the menu. As designers, we have enjoyed the unique experience of being part of a vibrant team and atmosphere!” said Artist Ivan Parati.
f. Beyond Absolut Creative Advertising: Vodka with Nothing to Hide
In 2018, long after absolut’s ad campaign had come to an end, it started tracing the brand communication to its roots.
Absolut launched an ad titled “Nothing to Hide” symbolising its production philosophy: one source.
The positioning plays to its strength of taking responsibility from seed to bottle.
II. Why did It work?
a. Key Factor: Cultural Changes Setting Foundation for the Absolut’s Campaign
Marketing has become synonymous with digital marketing in the 21st century, research has taken a back seat and mindless execution by the virtue of creating endless content has seized control.
Marketers have turned a blind eye to the impact of history, culture, and behavioural science on marketing campaigns.
All that being said, cultural influences of history was a key ingredient in the successful creative positioning of Absolut as an artistic spirit’s brand.
In the decade of 1960 till 1975, the United States was still at war with Vietnam but people were already fed up with two great wars and wanted peace.
College students even started protesting which led to the rise of the hippie revolution.
The hippie revolution was a milestone in history that changed human behaviour in unimaginable ways: marijuana and LSD became casual use, a life beyond making a career emerged, a concept of true freedom without the hassles of life started evolving and most importantly: artistic expressions started evolving through music and art.
All of this laid a rock-solid foundation for Absolut to leverage and position itself as an artistic & premium liquor brand.
Use this, how ?
Research the cultural changes in your demographic, understand how the culture relates or affects your positioning, leverage the culture to play and power your creative positioning.
b. Resonance
If this is not the first time you are reading my work, you must be knowing how resonance is an omnipotent word for me and plays as a classic ingredient in my reasoning for every successful strategy.
In the advertising campaign, Absolut leveraged buildings of national importance, famous streets, maps of cities, festivals, important dates, culturally significant events, LGBTQ themes and the list goes on.
In a nutshell, anything and everything an average joe can imagine and resonate with, Absolut did it.
They were globally popularized and locally focussed.
The Absolut advertising campaign ran non stop for 25 years and racked up more than 1500 variations.
This campaign incepted Absolut in the hall of advertising fame in 1992 along with just two other brands, Nike and Coca Cola.
Steal this idea
Your brand’s communication plays the most important role in building trust and engagement with your target audience, true engagement happens only when your brand’s story resonates with people.
People don’t buy into product features, they buy into the emotional resonance originating from the story of your brand.
c. Audience Participation
Audience participation acts as an extension to resonance in campaigns. When your audience truly resonates with your brand’s emotion and story, they are willing to act, follow and preach.
Absolut ensured audience participation through thought. Let me explain what participation through thought means:
When the audience saw posters and adverts of the iconic Absolut bottle displayed in variations of cities, streets, festivals, important events etc, they resonated with the thought of the advert.
Upon resonation, they felt the urge to spread the word due to the closeness of the thought to their heart.
Similarly, Absolut Nights and Absolut Art bars saw the participation of artists and party folks directly with the brand. The participation enforced the positioning and enabled word of mouth.
Use this, how ?
1. Instead of bombarding your audience with content and CTAs, resonate with them through your story. Invite them to be a part of your story and let the audience build the brand.
2. Experiential initiatives in communication strengthens the brand’s foothold in the community and engraves it’s positioning.
d. Versatile Mediums
Absolut demonstrated the importance of versatile mediums beautifully by leveraging adverts, experiential art bars, experiential Absolut nights and Absolut DeadMau-5( a VR based video game created in association with DeadMau-5).
The versatile mediums enable a brand to engage with its audience on multiple levels and in various contexts.
Use this, how ?
Incorporate a varied mix of media & content consumption tactics which resonate with your creative positioning and target them through your brand’s marketing efforts.
Final Notes
Absolut has risen from 10,000 cases a year in 1979 to sell 10–12 million 9 litre cases every year in 2019.
This quantum leap is a product of various factors and I can wholeheartedly say that positioning and advertising played a colossal role.
The game of big data and immediate number crunching in the form of sales and revenue reports have been downplaying the role of branding and creative advertising for ages.
Unfortunately, lack of creativity and reliance on businesses only on numbers has led to numerous businesses shutting down in the long run.
Use this, how ?
It is imperative for your brand to truly stand out, for which positioning and creative marketing must be leveraged.
Your brand/business’s sales numbers are only a way to keep score of how your brand/business is doing during any given time, it is in no way a measure of assuring success of your brand. It is a side benefit of building a valuable brand.
This article is a part of my series called creative creeps in Scrappy. If you liked this read, you will definitely love my creative creeps take on “ How A revolutionary social campaign enforced the govt. to take action”.
See you in the next one.