Absolut Brand Mistake

Absolut vodka is one of my longtime favorite brands. For years, their brilliant experiential campaigns (endless creative ideas based on the unique shape of the bottle) proved the potency of a great experiential brand. After all, if vodka is legally defined as “an odorless, colorless, flavorless alchohol,” then how else can you account for a premium price in the category? Absolut also showed the power of sticking with a good strategy, and of building brand equity for the long term.

But a new ad campaign this week has drawn my attention to the fact that even the best brand managers can sometimes make a very basic mistake.

In case you didn’t know (I’d forgotten), Absolut recently added a new “super-premium” brand of vodka. Apparently the company decided that the brand it had poured millions into was not strong enough to compete against today’s “super-premium” newcomers, at a 50% price markup. This I find mystifying. Can’t a great brand take a little heat?

But worse, was their brand architecture choice – a new, endorsed brand. They called it “Level”--with a similar bottle shape, but only very unobvious text at the bottom whispering “spirit of Absolut” -- so that it’s very easy to not even realize that Level is an Absolut brand.

What a perfect example of the wrong brand portfolio strategy. If they truly needed a new brand to move up, then the smart strategy would have been a sub-brand like “Absolut Ultra” that leveraged the existing brand equity. This has been done very effectively in the liquor industry, e.g. by Johnnie Walker scotch, which has a “Johnnie Walker Blue” scotch (aged more years, etc.) that is about 500% more expensive than their premium Johnnie Walker Black. This sort of brand extension capitalizes on the enormous awareness and positive equity built up in the original brand, allows you to move into a new price point where the original might not reach, and even reflects the “super premium” shine of the new brand back onto the original. (Johnnie Walker Black looks a little better when you notice its cousin Blue costs $199.)

I would applaud Absolut for guts if they were finally throwing some resources behind “Level” and the new communications were creating an exciting customer experience unlike anything else in the category. But so far, I’ve seen a website and print ads which look just like every other “cool” new vodka on the block.

Absolut, come back from your madness!