Trade paper slams new Grey Goose ads

Since Bacardi took ownership of Grey Goose, the spirits industry has been waiting to see what sort of changes it might make in the marketing of the French vodka that had climbed to the top shelf of vodkas in a very short time.

Well, the new ad campaign has begun and Bob Garfield of the respected Advertising Age magazine and Web site is not impressed, Garfield, never known for pulling his punches, has this to say in his column headlined "Obnoxious Ads for Overpriced Vodka":

"Bacardi wishes to sell preposterously expensive ultra-mega-super-premium vodka to showoffs, wannabes and snobs. Hence a series of meditations "On Discerning Tastes" -- associating the brand with such sophisticated activities as sailing, jazz evenings and the U.S. Open finals.

"It's the hoariest gambit in the world: to flatter customers into imagining they are not conspicuous consumers but discriminating ones. That when they belly up to the bar calling for Grey Goose, they can tell the difference between it and Stoli and Absolut and the rail vodka, because they have rarified tastes that the mere hoi polloi could never understand. That they are, sniff, a cut above."

Read Garfield's entire column here. Accompanying it is a video of one of the ads which, I must say, doesn't look all that terrible to me.

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