Less is Less: Ketel One Should Fill the Glass a Little More

Anyone with a fresh box of Crayolas and susceptibility to compulsive doodling owes a huge debt of gratitude to Ketel One. The vodka marketer has been generously donating white space in magazine and newspaper ads to frustrated Picassos for several years.

At least, that’s what I think it’s doing. It sure hasn’t been trying to sell vodka through the spots, which feature chatty little conversation starters in gothic-style text.

The problem is these conversation starters don’t go anywhere. Not even to a Web site – there’s nary a URL on the page. I suppose including one would have ruined the creative director’s concept. (He’s probably a vermouth man.)

Typical examples of the ads include “Dear Ketel One Drinker: There you go again, leading by example.” This is followed by two thirds of a page of white space. Then there’s “Dear Ketel One Drinker. Can you find the subliminal message in this advertisement?” Followed by two-thirds of a page of white space.

In a loquacious moment, one ad features the text: “Dear Ketel One Drinker: People say you can tell a lot about a person by what they drink. For instance, if you drink Ketel One Citroen it means you like Ketel One Citroen.”

Yeah. And it also probably means you’ve got enough time on your hands to draw and color in the half-page of uncreative white space left over.

The ads are so minimalist that they fail to answer the basic questions a marketing campaign should: Who is being targeted? What are the benefits of this product or service? For that matter, what is being sold?

That last question is a key point: In some of these ads, the fact that there is a vodka somewhere in the offing seems to have been neatly overlooked by the copywriter.

Here’s another one of these ads which demonstrates this absence of distilled spirits. The ad’s text reads: “Dear Ketel One Drinker: If you like our advertising, please continue to buy our product. If you don’t like our advertising, please continue to buy our product.”

Our “product”? And I suppose one would find that at “the store”? An identifier of some sort would be appreciated.

The problem is these conversation starter ads don’t lead to dialogs with a customer: They are dreary monologs from a bloviating gasbag of an uncle, one whom you fervently pray will die soon so you can stop dreading Thanksgiving family gatherings.

This is especially frustrating when the spots actually feature something worth reacting to. One newspaper ad included Ketel One’s picks for the 50 greatest movies of all time. It was a provocative list, but even this ad is problematic: Ketel One offers its choices, and doesn’t allow any means for drinkers to comment. This is the one ad that doesn’t even feature a healthy whack of white space. Would a Web site set aside for comments really have been that difficult to establish?

The lack of any true interaction with potential customers speaks volumes about the strategy of the creative designers and the media placement team, if not the folks at Ketel One themselves. One can imagine the dialog since this campaign started.

“We’ve been using your stupid ads for six months/a year/two years now, and we still aren’t seeing a spike in sales!”

“You have to understand, this is an image-building buzz campaign. If the ads aren’t working yet, it’s because you haven’t given them enough time. Purchase a few more gross rating points, and everything will eventually be just fine.”

In 2007, the Ketel One folks may have added a rejoinder: “This is the Iraq War of marketing campaigns. The more we spend, the less tangible result we see!”

If these ads yield any additional vodka consumption, it will be on the part of Ketel One’s own marketing people, who are trying to drink away their market share blues.