Bourbon And Tennessee Now Number One In U.S. Sales.

The whiskey business changes slowly and it doesn't change very much, but it does change.

Here's an example.

According to Distilled Spirits Council (DISCUS) data, the Bourbon & Tennessee segment is now number one in U.S. whiskey sales, passing Canadian whiskey for the first time in, well, a long time.

There is some apples-to-oranges here because of the way DISCUS segments the marketplace. If you compare all U.S.-made whiskey to all Canadian-made whiskey (15.7 million cases sold in 2011), the U.S. wins by a wide margin, but DISCUS reports U.S. Straights (16 million) and U.S. Blends (5.3 million) separately.

Still, the fact that American whiskey drinkers have put American Straight Whiskey on top in the U.S. is reassuring for lovers of our national spirit.

The whole whiskey category is up, but only modestly, so there are some winners and losers. In 2010, Irish Whiskey slipped past Single Malt Scotch (SMS) and widened its lead in 2011.

SMS is doing very well in the United States, thank you, growing 9.5 percent in 2011 and reaching 1.4 million cases in annual sales.

But U.S. sales of Irish Whiskey went through the roof, growing 24 percent and selling 1.7 million cases, widening the lead over SMS that it eked out last year.

This is apples-to-oranges too, since the Irish figures include both blends and singles. Compare scotch to Irish, including everything, and there is no contest.

But the point is, it's significant when the rankings change.

Despite hard financial times, the losers in 2011 were all of the value segments, especially blended scotch, which declined by 2.6 percent. American blends and Canadians also lost volume. 

That doesn't necessarily mean everybody is buying the most expensive whiskeys they can find.

What seems to have developed in a 'sweet spot.' Let's call it entry-level super-premium. Jameson, which is leading the Irish explosion, is an import and perceived as a 'better' product, but it's hardly a budget-buster. In the U.S. Straights segment, Maker's Mark is a good example as, for that matter, is perennial champ Jack Daniel's.

Another oddity; while the tables seem to say blended whiskey is in decline across the board, the booming Irish segment is mostly blends, including Jameson, and it's glaringly bucking the trend.

The answer is branding. Jameson is a strong brand and its owner, Pernod, has put a lot of marketing muscle behind it. This proves again that people don't buy types, they buy brands.

Marketing Micro Spirits (Or Anything, For That Matter).

It came up recently on a site frequented by micro-distillers whether or not brand-imprinted golf balls are a good marketing vehicle or a waste of money. After several producers offered opinions, pro and con, I submitted this:

"There are no good or bad marketing tactics. (Giving away branded premiums such as golf balls is a tactic.) There are only tactics that support and advance your brand proposition (good) and tactics that do not (waste of money). The same exact branded golf balls may be a great tactic for one company and a terrible waste of money for another, depending on their brand propositions and strategic plans."

These questions flare up from time to time. What's interesting is that when the question is posed as it was originally -- "Golf Balls, Good or Bad" -- the opinions come flying. Then I make a statement like the one above and the discussion stops. That I seem to be good at closing discussions is interesting but beside the point. The question this raises is, how many of today's fledgling craft distillers have given any real thought to marketing? And how many have any grasp of basic marketing principles?

A few do. In some cases, at least one of the company's principals has a marketing background. Some are just naturals. Salesmanship can be taught but for some it's a matter of instinct. If you have talented sales people in your family or if you have been acquainted with them in a past business relationship, and learned their lessons, you may have a good grasp of the principles without being able to articulate them formally.

But I can tell from some of these discussions that in many cases, the people starting small distilleries haven't given the marketing of their products a second of thought. In a few cases, I've talked to small distillers who are hostile to the very idea of marketing, as somehow contrary to the purity of their endeavor. "A superior product doesn't need marketing."

Good luck with that.

Here are the basics of salesmanship and, by extension marketing, as I have distilled them down from 40 years in the business.

• Learn everything you can about your customers and prospective customers.
• Listen and let them tell you what they want.
• Tell them what you heard.
• Give them what they asked for.

Yeah, it is that simple.

Sales, marketing, product development, pricing, and distribution are all pieces to the same puzzle. You can't manage any of them in isolation from the others. Trying to do so is a good formula for failure.

This Is What Else I Do.

If you wish you could make a good living just writing about whiskey, so do I.

Like a lot of artists, if I may be so bold as to call myself that, I do several different things to get by. Most of them involve writing, but I also produce (video, audio) and consult. I have been a fulltime freelance writer for more than 20 years, primarily in marketing but not exclusively so.

I'm always looking for new business and since many people read this blog, I make a brief sales pitch from time to time. Here it is.

The main advantage to working with me is my depth of experience, in marketing and everything peripheral to it, with clients of every size. I am very good at translating corporate jargon into everyday English, for internal and external communications. I am also good at making technical material understandable to a non-technical audience. I’m a lawyer, which can come in handy for insurance, financial services, healthcare and other categories. In addition to writing (ads, brochures, scripts, speeches, features), I can help with strategy, planning, branding, you name it. Whatever it is, call me. I can help.

To reach me by email, click here. To download a one-page PDF with more information about my work, my clients, and how to contact me, click here. For my full CV, also in PDF format, click here. To get the free Adobe Reader, so you can read PDF files, go here.

UPDATE 4/16/22: Just in case someone stumbles across this post, I have retired from the above sort of work and have deactivated the links in the paragraph above. Thank you for your interest.

Jim Beam a Top 50 Brand Says Ad Age.

Every year about now, Advertising Age magazine runs this somewhat misleading feature. The 50 brands so honored are selected for doing something noteworthy in the last year or so and not, as you might imagine, for being the most successful or powerful brands generally.

As in most Ad Age features, someone is being stroked. The strokees are identified as "the brains behind" the brands. In Beam's case it is Rory Finlay, chief marketing officer of Beam Global, whose mantra is "building brands people want to talk about."

The full Jim Beam profile is here.

What Ad Age liked so much is what it calls Beam's "brand-as-activist approach," including ads Beam ran to protest the sale of Wrigley Field naming rights. It's all part of Beam's 'Stuff Inside' campaign.

I expressed my admiration for the whole campaign several months ago, here. I probably would not have identified the two ad campaigns that the magazine cites as the most noteworthy or original parts of it, but both did involve conventional media advertising and that's usually another common denominator with anything Ad Age finds worthy of glory.

What Clients Are Really Like, Really.

I have worked in advertising/marketing/corporate communications for about 35 years. This is what it's like, really. This video is widely posted on the web, but I can't find a source for it. The only actor I recognize is Al Samuel, who plays Al Click on the syndicated comedy show, "Sports Action Team." He plays the male client representative. Although I think he's a Chicago guy, that's all I know and there my search ends. Enjoy the video.

Remembering Wrong.

I'm not sure what it says about the advertising campaign, or about me, that even as I was looking at various Jim Beam web sites while writing Thursday's post, I remembered the campaign theme wrong. The correct theme is "The Stuff Inside Matters Most," which has been around since 2004, not "It's What's Inside That Counts," as I posted on Thursday.

I suppose I could just have corrected Thursday's post, though some would say that's not in the true spirit of blogging. That doesn't bother me much, I'm not a big fan of unpolished writing, but my mistake got me thinking about how we remember things.

Obviously, "The Stuff Inside Matters Most" is a proprietary way of saying "It's What's Inside That Counts," which is the familiar aphorism. That's what I wrote Thursday. The fact that I conflated the two probably indicates that the campaign is effective, in that I not only understand the two phrases as having the same meaning, my brain actually considers them interchangeable.

When I looked at it again a little while ago, I realized it was wrong and started to look for a recent Jim Beam ad. Naturally, I couldn't find one, so I poked around on the web enough to satisfy myself that the theme has only and always been "the stuff inside," which is now being spun-off into the social media campaign.

Always interesting how the mind works, or doesn't.

Jim Beam Launches Social Media Campaign.

Jim Beam is doing something interesting to promote white label. It's called a social media campaign. It was explained to me that social media "refers to conversation and community in the online space." Okay, I get it. Interactive. Like a blog.

They don't want to call this a campaign. They prefer "movement."

Here's the gist of it:

A crusade has begun. Jim Beam®, the world's number one selling bourbon, is thinking outside of the bottle in an entirely unconventional way by starting a movement to recognize, support and celebrate true character. By investing their multi-million dollar marketing budget into the success of selected individuals and organizations that represent the "Stuff Inside", (www.thestuffinside.com) Jim Beam is turning conventional marketing on its head.

By all means, visit the web site. It is the most content-rich web site I have seen from any beverage brand, although I can't say I spend a lot of time looking at sites for beverages that aren't whiskey.

But a warning to all of my whiskey-enthusiast friends. There isn't hardly anything on it about whiskey.

Apparently, that's the point.

(Go to www.jimbeam.com for the whiskey part. The "Brotherhood of Bourbon" lives on too, as does Beam Racing. Maker's Mark, Knob Creek, and the Small Batch Collection all have their own sites. Jim Beam has many web sites.)

Is it truly unconventional? We used to call this integrated marketing. One of the things I love about marketing, after 35 years in the business, is that the basic principles and techniques don't change very much, but every few years everything gets renamed.

So I don't know how unconventional it is, but they are pulling it off much better than most.

I like the way they are using it to tie a lot of existing initiatives together, like their racing, music and comedy sponsorships, which they've been doing for years.

I also like that they let the "It's What's Inside That Counts" theme get well established before they introduced this double-meaning. They were patient enough to wait until just the right time to expand the meaning this way. That's very sophisticated branding. It's very hard for marketers these days to take the long view, even when the long view is part of the brand's positioning.

There is one, small, quibbly problem with the whole package, however. It's the fundamental claim that Beam whiskey hasn't changed since 1795, a span of 213 years. It's a great metaphor, a nice way of saying that their whiskey has been made by the same family for 213 years, using methods passed down from father to son (and the occasional uncle or cousin). All of that is absolutely true.

But taken literally in reference to the whiskey itself, it's problematic, since no whiskey sold today is like whiskey was 213 years ago, and you wouldn't want it to be. That goes for Beam whiskey and everybody else. Whiskey then wasn't aged, the stills were different, the alcohol content was different. As for the Jim Beam brand itself, it is a post-Prohibition creation, so less than 75 years old.

What would be a good, smart, sophisticated, pro-active way to make all that a positive? De-emphasize the theme's literal meaning and build up its application as a metaphor.

Color me impressed.