The resurrection of Canadian Club

From Advertising Age:

Alcohol marketers generally regard being labeled a brand your father would drink as a death knell, but Canadian Club's embrace of that distinction seems to be reversing one of the industry's longest-running sales declines.

Canadian Club received $3.5 million on measured media last year, 91% of which came in magazine advertising in November and December, after the "Damn Right" campaign launched.

The Canadian whiskey brand in November introduced a new campaign declaring, "Damn right your dad drank it." The mostly print effort attempted to redefine dad as less Ward Cleaver and more "Mad Men" through provocative statements like "Your mom wasn't your dad's first."

The early returns suggest it may be working. Case volume of Canadian Club in food, drug and liquor stores rose 4.4% in the 13 weeks ending March 8, outpacing the category and its dominant brand, Diageo's Crown Royal, during the same stretch, according to AC Nielsen data.

Those gains may sound modest, but in the context of Canadian Club's performance over the past two decades, they border on a revelation. Case shipments fell from 3.9 million in 1980 to 1.5 million in 1995, trickling down to 1.3 million last year, according to Impact's Annual Spirits Study.

(Read the rest of the story here.)

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