Absolut Vodka is going green this year — and it has nothing to do with its pear-flavored product.
The company announced back in January that it would kick off a yearlong multi-channel brand campaign built around eco-consciousness.
Last month it brought out the creative content for the first phase of that initiative: A Web site dedicated to the Absolut “Global Cooling” campaign, and bottle codes and cocktail recipe cards that let Absolut buyers choose one of three environmental charities they’d like the company to donate $1 to, up to a total of $500,000 for the year.
The green campaign fulfills several aims for Absolut. “Most fundamentally, it reinforces our new tagline, ‘In an Absolut World,’” says Ian Crystal, brand director for Absolut Vodka. The tag is Absolut’s first big marketing break with long-time trademark ads built around its bottle.
But Absolut has been a responsible environmental citizen for years, Crystal says, and believes that now is the time to get that message out. The Swedish distiller has reduced its water usage by 57% since 2004 and grows its vodka grain according to sustainable agriculture precepts. Parent V&S Group has promised to achieve total carbon neutrality by 2008 and to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 25% per liter sold by 2010.
“Absolut has a story to tell and wants to get it out to the consumer in a variety of ways,” says Phil Koutsis, group creative director for G2 Branding and Design, Absolut’s longstanding creative agency.
Those ways started with a partnership with Live Earth, the eco-group that held the largest global entertainment event in history last July with concerts in eight cities. The distiller is sending five short films by Live Earth on a tour of U.S. film festivals in New York, Miami, FL, Telluride, CO, and Los Angeles. The Web site also serves up a sampler of Live Earth short films, together with a link to the Live Earth site.
Web site visitors can also register the bottle codes that appear when they chill their Absolut retail purchases. Customers can input the codes and examine the three charities to which Absolut will donate $500,000 this year: The Ocean Foundation, the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation and the Environmental Media Association.
Customers can designate one of these to receive the $1 contribution Absolut will make for each unique product code and track the support other Absolut Global Cooling drinkers are giving to the non-profits through a bar chart on the home page.
The national promotion will also feature an in-bar angle. Anyone ordering a cocktail made with an Absolut brand will get from the bartender a card with an access code, which can be registered by short-coding a text message or by going online.
Whether coming to the site from a bottle or a glass, visitors registering a code are also encouraged to post a short statement about why fighting global warming is important to them.
“The Web site for this campaign was conceived as a place where consumers could make a difference, but also make a statement and have their ‘showtime’ moment,” says Rita Wheat, senior vice president and strategy director for G2 Interactive, which produced the digital portion of the campaign.
The user comments — “This one’s for the polar bears!” from Bradford of Melrose, TN, for example — are distributed throughout the site and reinforce the brand message that “In an Absolut World, Every Sip Makes a Statement.”
The campaign will also launch new features later in 2008, Crystal says. These will most likely include some kind of partnership with an existing social network to give the campaign a strong viral element.
“We’re working on some strategic alliances to help build the social networking function,” he says. He adds that Absolut made an early decision to link to an existing social network rather than build its own. “The old model of bringing people to your Web site has changed,” he says. “As a lifestyle brand, we want to live where our consumers live.”
Also to come in the campaign later this year: A strong branded presence around this year’s Live Earth event, a promotion that has celebrities using Absolut materials to design reusable tote bags, and numerous in-bar promotions, including one that will let patrons power the lights by pedaling a bike.
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