Have Bourbon, Will Travel

Jim Beam takes its pour on tour around Eastern Europe.

Jim Beam Brands Co. is getting in the faces of thousands of consumers around Europe with an integrated promotion invading 28 foreign markets, including metro areas in Russia, Scandinavia, the Baltic States, and several Mediterranean countries.

The campaign is the Kentucky-based bourbon maker’s most expansive promotion to date, and part of a new global repositioning strategy.

The 18-month “Real Friends. Real Bourbon” campaign began last September with the launch of “Wanted,” the first flight in a three-program set of themed promotions that will roll out over the next year.

Field marketers are hitting bars, nightclubs, and supermarkets in targeted European markets to recruit “real” people to appear in future print advertising, which will attempt to illustrate the typical bar patron in each market. Field staffers hand out samples and logoed merchandise to patrons, then snap photos of them drinking. The photos from each market are sent to Beam p.r. agency Burson-Marstellar, New York City, which selects the ad-worthy ones. Participating bars win too, with their names appearing with the photos in ad copy – which provides extra incentive for them to back the on-premise events.

In low-traffic bars, samplers are handing out “Wanted” postcards patrons can mail in with names, addresses, and the reason they want to appear in the ad campaign. (E-mail addresses are being captured for future marketing efforts.)

The events are being publicized on the Jim Beam Web site, as well as in magazine ads and “recruitment stands” located in shopping malls and participating bars.

Supporting the photo-shooting endeavor are a pair of in-bar games. One is an instant-win trivia contest in which samplers ask patrons questions related to cowboys, sports, movies, music, and sex (examples: “Who starred in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? and “Name four Sharon Stone movies”) in return for Beam merchandise. The other features on-premise kiosks that dispense scratch-and win gamecards offering instant prizes. Trade accounts were invited to participate in any and all of the three planned promotions.

The design of the P-O-P displays and the premium merchandise reflect Beam’s new global marketing “look,” which carries an American Western theme. “Wanted” posters and banners, mimicking the style of old cowboy crime sheets hung in post offices, hang outside venues.

The key objective is “to present Jim Beam as a serious global brand while creating impact and trial in established and developing markets across Europe,” says Graeme Atha, business development director with DraftWorldwide in Edinburgh, Scotland, which handles. “It’s important to portray the brand in a dynamic, contemporary, and relevant context to today’s European consumer.”

There are many inherent challenges in developing a promotion across so many disparate European markets, according to Atha. Not surprisingly, most obstacles relate to language, cultural, and legal barriers that often make working in one country a very different experience than executing in another.

For example, as much as Beam was betting German consumers would be receptive to the program, local authorities feared the promotion “would encourage anti-social behavior among young men who would try to out-do one another using outrageous behavior when they posed for the shots,” Atha says. On the other hand, bars in developing countries such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Russia “felt honored to be involved.”

The U.K. and German markets are tough to infiltrate, since bars in those regions “act like they are doing the brand a favor” by participating, he notes.

“We are seeing favorable results,” Atha says about the effort thus far. “The key is keeping the concepts and language simple, developing impactful P-O-P materials, and being flexible. It’s also important to be willing to adapt the promotion to the various cultural differences.”

One interesting note is that Jim Beam’s Web site has been extremely effective in legally restricted countries, acting as a cost-effective way of operating “under the radar” of local regulations. It seems online laws have not quite caught up with the offline ones yet.

Must be a lot of cowboys online.