Notorious Beam Team

I am a very happy user of Love Film (like Netflix but UK based) and was really intrigued when my square Love Film parcel arrived earlier this week. It was bulging with what turned out to be a sample of Cadbury's Bournville chocolate. What a clever way of doing targeted sampling. They obviously knew from my choice of Grand Designs Series 2 Disc A that I had ordered this DVD for my girlfriend... girlfriend's and girls love chocolate. Genius.

I wonder if this would work for some of our brands. You can tailor the brand used for sampling by person, film, film choice history and a whole host of factors. It's not intrusive and offers something unexpected and useful. For instance, Apple Sourz has a link to both Scrubs and Sex and the City through the Appletini...

See the evidence below.

From Not Cot:

"On sleek furniture designs… i fell for the Karim Rashid Veuve Clicquot Loveseat this morning over at Luxist. There’s something about the infinite curves, yet a nice separation of space (with a bottle of bubbly as the border?) that's enticing, and the photography for the piece is beautifully surreal."





Great design. Something worth talking about. Great site from Verve as well. We should be doing things like this for our luxury brands/upper marques and ensure they are featured on sites like This Next and Luxist.

It only has a few members but this facebook group is making its voice heard. They simply don't like the new style glass. Apparently it look effeminate and not like the manly old "baseball bat" design.

"The new "chalice" Stella glass is ruining the noble art of drinking Stella. Why mess with a winning formula? The previous "baseball bat" design was functional and far more appropriate. The new glass is camp and makes you want to drink cooking lager."

I wonder how seriously the guys at Stella will take this.

More marketing innovation from Guinness. Previously we showed Guinness Marmite, the Guinness rugby chair, Guinness Hands, their awesomely clever anamorphic coasters, Guinness Red, their partnership with Le cool and the Guinness blog... now we've got Guinness Wholegrain Bread!

It's been much anticipated but now it's here. From Snackspot:

"Ah thinks the Kaptain, the moanses you told the Snacking Spot of the lack of sightings in the homeland has instead yielded a new reward for the Kaptain. He brings you the Guinness Wholegrain Bread, brew baked in the Northern Ireland by Irwin's bakery. Sampling the bread the Kaptain was rewarded with delicious malty whole wheat tasting trembles. The alkyhols sacrificed in the heats of the oven flames, but the malty beer stenches remaining. The Kaptain wonders if the komarades on foreign shores will enjoy its tastes, he hopes so, he hopes so very much."

"Produced at Irwin's Portadown bakery the bread has an authentic 17 per cent real Guinness content - giving it a richly dark appearance and the unmistakable malty taste of the beer."

Apparently it tastes like dark soda bread and can be bought in Waitrose. Some of the comments also point to the existence of Guinness fudge, which sounds like it didn't go down too well!

To find out more about it read this article from the Irish Times.

It seems that Guinness have updated their thinking and are leveraging their powerful platform with some Marketing Innovation a la John Grant. It's a great way of super charing your brand.

Ages ago I wrote something pretty boring about Facebook and how it's useful etc. Blah, blah, blah.

In the spirit of show, not tell here some more stuff that hopefully illustrates the point rather than making me have to write about it.

This Facebook group has 684 members who all love doing Jaegerbombs. They are mainly from Cape Town and Jo'burg and are basically super charged brand enthusiasts unwittingly doing a great marketing job for whoever sells Jaegermeister and Red Bull in SA. Drinking solutions, market research, sales drives, word of mouth, PR and brand ambassadors. Not sure you need much else. They are even making their own adverts!









Compliant? Debatable.

Effective? No question!

Let go of your brand. Let it be hijacked. Team up with a suitable partner (Red Bull), identify specific groups of people. And watch your brand take off.

Looks like Canadian whisky does have a younger, more webby fan base than people thought.

Recommended, again, on This Next.



Could be a good way to Disccover Canadian Club.

On the subject of recommendation sites I noticed that 3G is recommended on This Next.



Always good to know you've got friends.

Other Beam brands with recommendations are: Hornitos and Maker's Mark.

Our aim should be for all of our brands to be recommended and talked about in these situations more often.

From Slashfood:

"I hadn't touched tequila for the better part of a decade until someone handed me a glass of Patrón in Las Vegas a few years ago. The aged, crystal clear, premium flavor redefined any preconceived notion of tequila that I had, and set a whole new standard for what I would order in the way of tequila from that point on, even in my margaritas.

That said, I was pretty excited to see that they have expanded their line to include a tequila infused with pure coffee essence - Patrón XO Café. Since I haven't tried it yet, I'm hoping Jonathan will do an in-depth review at some point, but in the meantime I'll leave you with a number of drink recipes recommended on their website, which can be found after the jump."

To continue reading the article, comments and numerous recipes click here.

This has got to be the way to help launch new SKUs and a super way in general to help seed drinking strategies and word of mouth campaigns.

A while ago I mentioned that we should be aiming to get our brands talked about on major blogs; specifically the likes of NotCot, BoingBoing, Coolhunting, This Next, SlashFood etc.

I was having a look at Slashfood and the first item on their blog was a cocktail recipe that had been posted on This Next about how good Hornitos is.

Have a look at the SlashFood article here.

And the This Next recommendation here.

Here's the text from Slashfood:

"On the weekends at the beach, you're wasting away in Margaritaville. During the week, you're a swanky Rat Packer at the uptown lounge. Honey, it sounds like you're going through a little identity crisis.

Alyson's Margaritatini is just the thing for the swanky, sophisticated beach bums. It's a combination of margarita ingredients, shaken and served (halfway) "up" in stemless glasses like a martini. It's got "none of the melt, all the ole!" Sound good? Not even close. The kicker is a little secret ingredient that you can find out only by clicking through to get the recipe."







What's also interesting is the fact that once you are featured on one big blog it's very often picked up and cross referenced on other blogs and then syndicated out further. This can often lead to blog storms. It's a great way of spreading the word very quickly. In addition because of permalinks people often bring up issues and items of interest from the past. So a PR triumph or failure on a blog will stay fresh and powerful far longer than a standard article in the paper. Plus personal recommendations are often more powerful than articles in papers.

See the cross syndicated article on Hornitos below from Tastespotting:





Word of mouth, the long tail and the power of user recommendations are so important. We should be aiming to encourage and precipitate this kind of activity as much as possible.

NotCot has found this brilliant piece of design and packaging for Absinthe:

"What is one to think when your favorite candy company comes out with an incredibly gorgeous line of absinthe products… with some of the most breathtaking graphics and packaging? Chic City Rats pointed out this collection, and noted that Torino based, Pastiglie Leone is turning 150 this year!"

Great design.

From Coolhunting:

"Hudson Manhattan Rye Whiskey, by Tuthilltown Spirits, is the first rye whiskey legally made in New York since prohibition and is fast becoming the connoisseur's drink of choice. At 92 proof, the spirit has a slightly spicy, fruity taste, concocted to compliment sweet vermouth in the classic New York–born cocktail, The Manhattan.

Ground, cooked, fermented and double distilled in Gardiner, NY, the bottles are hand filled, capped, waxed and numbered one at a time in limited numbers.

You can expect their second batch in stores and bars around the New York region in June. For those of you not in the New York area, contact Tuthilltown Spirits to reserve your bottle or even a whole cask."



If you have a prowl around their website it's fun to see you can order your own cask of whiskey. Pictures of hand labelling add to the mystique and sense of craftsmanship as well.

From NotCot:

Reyka Vodka looks amazing and comes with the most charming, engaging packaging and advertising campaign reminiscent of Hendricks and 42 Below.

"Reyka Vodka ~ from iceland ~ their ads on youtube have had me in stitches all morning (watch them all below). Her voice and outfit are ADORABLE… in a hilariously cute kind of way… and the black and white sketchy animated world she exists in is just brilliant. And her poignant arguments make me giggle too much this morning. So, while i can’t say anything about how good the vodka is, the ads certainly make me want to try some… gorgeous bottle as well. Check out their website here, its got some pretty woodblock style graphics."









Each bottle has a different story:







Quite brilliantly the website links to the Icelandic Penis Museum which made us all laugh... some great specimens in there including one with a bottle of Crown Royal inside it!





Crown Royal Penis:

Muji seems to sell as many refills as it does pens. Schwartz Spices must sell a large proportion of its goods in refill packs as opposed to heavy glass jars.





Maybe this could incorporate something as ecologically friendly as this from Springwise:



Could we experiment by selling our glass bottled booze at a price premium in very stylish bottles and then sell subsequent refill cartons at discounted prices? It would be a great step in the right direction environmentally...

Some wine brands are using Tetra Packs to do this although there is some doubt about their recycling credentials too.



Also, as we have commented previously, non clear glass bottles can't be recycled and often get used as road aggregate... therefore any bottle that isn't clear should be ditched in favour of see through glass or something even more environmentally sound.

This can't be done half heartedly.

From PSFK again:

Jones Soda, the soda company widely known for its consumer-submitted label designs, has announced their plan to use Pure Cane Sugar rather than High-Fructose Corn Syrup in all Jones products. Advertising the transition with a cheeky, "Corn is for Cars...Sugar is for Soda" tagline, Jones was motivated by a growing population wanting less and less HFCS in their diets and that: ...it tastes better and overall it's better for the environment (No GMO’s). So leave the corn for your cars, and keep the sugar for your soda.

From the brilliant PSFK:

An appropriately named new service called BuyYourFriendaDrink.com is enabling people to do just that. Users can go to the website, enter in their friend's cell phone number and the amount of money they want to spend ($5 - $250) and a text message will be sent to person on the other end with a redemption code. That code is then handed over to participating bars and drinks are served. Each transaction includes a $0 .99 processing fee.

The service is currently only available in New York at a select number of establishments, but there are plans to expand to other northeastern and mid-Atlantic cities with the west coast unfolding in the second half of 2007.



It would be great if we could find a way of collaborating.

From Coolhunting:

"Historically frowned upon as cheap imitations for those who can't mix their own, two new mixers help remove the stigma by making delicious concentrates using high-quality ingredients. Our first contender, Mixerz, comes to us from California's Napa Valley, the cradle of America's fine wine industry that in the 1980s broke the backs of the jugwine industry, elevating California wines to a world standard. Using all natural ingredients, Mixerz has done the same for cocktail mixers.

Each of the seven ingredients tastes remarkably like a freshly mixed cocktail. We were skeptical about one of our favorite summer drinks, the mojito, which is impossible to enjoy without good-quality mint leaves; nevertheless, Cool Hunting tasters were won over with this thirst-quenching mixer made by steeping real mint leaves—it has a convincing lime flavor and isn't too sweet. Others to try are the Bloody Mary, Margarita and Cosmopolitan. Even with such an uncreative name, Mixerz delivers the goods.

In the same vein, Sweetbird syrups deliver nearly 30 flavors for cocktails, smoothies, milkshakes or any variety of recipes. The flavors are fairly conventional; they stick to the known universe with options like caramel, chocolate, toasted marshmallow and peach, pineapple and raspberry, rather than trying to be outlandish. What they might lack in innovation, they more than make up for in consistency of quality. Bereft of anything artificial, they're also certified by the Vegetarian Society; aside from the culled marshmallows, each syrup is guaranteed cruelty-free. Also check out the chocolate (white and black) and caramel sauces."

Competitior to Sourz? Very impresed by their use of all natural ingredients...

Environmental brand innovation. All brands should be doing this. Clear bottles. Recycling. Organics. But for the right reason.

Depicts 10,000 jet trails, equal to the number of commercial flights in the US every eight hours.







From Chris Jordan via MIT Adverlab:

"Chris Jordan "looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books.""

It's an amazing example of how to bring statistics to life and reminds me of Edward Tufte the hero of graphical representation of stats.



To see more of Chris Jordan's fascinating images click here.