Canadian Club whisky kicked off its largest marketing promotion to date last month, tying its brand to the explosive popularity of poker, especially among its new target demo: young men.
The promotion mixes a potent cocktail of events, sponsorships, sweepstakes, contests, sampling, a dedicated Web site and a chance to win a whopping $2.5 million prize.
The brand has earmarked up to $3 million for an effort that it expects will jumpstart sluggish sales. Its most loyal customers now average 50 years old. They remain faithful, but the brand is looking to engage the lucrative 21- to 29-year old male who can frequently be found among the 60 million in the U.S. sitting behind a hand of poker cards.
“It gave us an opportunity to target our recruit [demographic], but it doesn’t alienate our current base of loyal consumers,” says Susie Kilgore, marketing director for CC and Beefeater, two Allied Domecq brands. “In addition to the fact that it’s a hot lifestyle property, for Canadian Club it was a beautiful fit because it’s a social game that has been around a long time, just like Canadian Club.”
The other affinity between poker, its players and the brand plays on CC’s central message for the campaign: the beverage is smooth, a critical attribute for a whisky and for a poker player who wants to successfully bluff his opponents.
“It was a very logical tie for us,” Kilgore says.
The Dealing up a Smoother Night national program runs through August. In addition to thousands of on- and off-premise promotions, five regional poker tournaments will include more than 350 on-premise poker-themed events at sports bars in five key Canadian Club markets.
The program will give 10 winners the chance to compete alongside World Series of Poker Champion Chris Moneymaker in Las Vegas for the mega purse. At the events, Canadian Club signature “Smooth” cocktails can be sampled: CC and Cola and CC and Ginger.
“We don’t really need complicated, complex cocktails,” Kilgore says.
The CC brand will appear on poker tables, chips, cards and consumer giveaways. “Smooth” ambassadors, direct mail, e-mail newsletters and off-premise P-O-S materials support. A special-edition poker bottle is in stores through July.
Moneymaker, an amateur player who came to win the 2003 World Series of Poker, will make several guest appearances at the events, and will attend promotions with distributors in leading CC markets.
“[Moneymaker] entered the tournament on the Internet with $40 and won a million bucks,” says John Dunleavy, senior VP-group account director, Publicis Dialog, New York. “He’s just a regular guy, kind of like our Candian Club consumer.”
The five regional winners will qualify to go to Las Vegas in August to compete in the final tournament hosted by Moneymaker at the MGM Grand. The winner gets to play one hand against Moneymaker for a chance at the $2.5 million prize. An additional four players will be chosen from regional sweepstakes, and a tenth player will be selected from a national contest at CCSmooth.com that will be heavily promoted through off-premise merchandising and in 10 additional markets where CC will conduct more than 400 on-premise poker nights.
The dedicated Web site supporting the promotion offers poker tips, event schedules, brand info and more. Relay Sponsorship & Event Marketing worked with parent Publicis (which is Allied Domecq’s AOR) to execute.
CC is no stranger to poker. It began its affiliation at the grassroots level in 2001 doing one-off events prior to pokers’ huge surge in popularity. The timing of Allied Domecq’s major investment in the program coincides with CC’s return to sales growth. Volume sales for the brand increased by about 8% for the four-week period ending March 5, 2005, according to AC Nielsen.
Kilgore attributed the spike to basic merchandising principles put in place prior to the major launch, including pricing and availability.
“We’ve got our house in order, and we’re now standing on the precipice of launching the right program, at the right time, for the right consumer,” Kilgore says.
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