It took about a week.

Maker’s Mark has now completed the legendary and incredibly difficult New Coke Maneuver.

After backlash from customers, the producer of Maker’s Mark bourbon is reversing a decision to cut the amount of alcohol in bottles of its famous whiskey.

Rob Samuels, Maker’s Mark’s chief operating officer, said Sunday that it is restoring the alcohol volume of its product to its historic level of 45 percent, or 90 proof. Last week, it said it was lowering the amount to 42 percent, or 84 proof, because of a supply shortage.

“We’ve been tremendously humbled over the last week or so,” Samuels, grandson of the brand’s founder, said of customers’ reactions.
—NBC News (H/T: @TeeKeeMon)

I didn’t quite have the guts to predict this when I posted about it last week. You can see from the post title that I cut out a lot of my speculation, in part because it would have been so risky, and in part because I wanted to focus on the bind Maker’s was in economically and marketing-wise.

But I kinda think they pulled it off. Most giant corporate entities who try similar maneuvers, planned or not, (I’m looking at you Netflix and The Artist Formerly Known as Prince and Now Is Once Again Known as Prince™) fail like Hitler’s push on Stalingrad. But I’m betting Maker’s has pulled it off. And they pulled it off because of the fact that they were honest about why they made the move in the first place.

They had to do something, as I outlined before.

If they had just jacked up the price, with a few dry stories about supply constraints in business publications, customers would have just noticed the price increase and said, “Aw, sheeoot! Maker’s is so damned expensive alluva sudden. They’re a awfully proud of their product these days. I’ll be proud of my Jim Beam for less.”

If they had constrained supply, bars and restaurants would have stopped making it a staple brand. And cutomers not finding it on shelves would have said, “Hmmm. No Maker’s these days. I’ve always wanted to see what the fuss was with this Four Roses….”

If they’d just tried to quietly lower the proof with the bullcrud explanation that customers wanted less booze in their booze, as Jack Daniels (barely) got away with in an era before Twitter and FaceBook lynch mobs roamed the Earth, in this age, where Twitter and FaceBook lynch mobs roam the Earth, they would have been crucified with comments like this:

Alert drunkard Chris Sharp brought this unfathomable blasphemy to my attention and I feel it my sworn duty to bring it to yours.

“I was outraged,” says Sharp, a once avid Jack drinker. “They continue to claim in their ads that they stick to tradition. Tradition, my ass. If they think that people will take this sitting down they are sadly mistaken.”
—Modern Drunkard Magazine, on the Jack Daniels watering

But Maker’s pushed their decision big. They went out of their way to tell all their biggest customers what they were doing, and more importantly, why. And they were explicit with the press about the problem as the inevitable wave hit. And customers told them, in no uncertain terms, and in a way that everyone knew what everyone else was telling them, that, “Thank you, but we’d really prefer that you keep our whiskey the same, and try one of those other options.” (Please note the peculiar consumer deceit that it is “our” bourbon.) I disagree with the old adage that any publicity is good publicity, but Maker’s didn’t hunker down and stonewall through it, but made sure every reputable story about the situation made clear the problem was real.

Now Maker’s can go back to the old formula. The customers have essentially all told them “raise the price instead,” and they know they all told Maker’s that. If they see an intermittent shortage, they will know why. Maker’s has the consumer buy-in to take the long-term path out of a supply crunch.

Source: Bourbon Blog.
Follow the link for more on initial reaction to the 84 proof decision.

And now they have cases and cases of the best collector’s item bourbon out there. Bottles that will be bought, but not drunk. Most bottles sold at 84 proof will be sold right alongside a bottle of 90 proof that is meant to be drunk.

Did they mean to do this all along? Just as I’m not a Coca-Cola Classic Truther, I doubt (despite my suspicions this would end this way) they intended for this to happen. But they were smart. And they did lay the groundwork to retreat and get away with it. I think that they will.

Source: WDRB

The Maker’s Mark distillery has announced a change in the classic formulation of their iconic bourbon. It’s simple really, just an increase in one premium ingredient… water. Maker’s has sent a letter to its “Ambassadors” (its most ardent, heavy-buying fans) announcing that it is essentially watering down its product. This is an interesting and important development in the spirits, and especially the whiskey industry, for a host of reasons.

The most important part of this is the why behind Maker’s decision. The global whiskey marketplace is undergoing some significant changes, and this is much more likely to be one of the first, rather than the last, impacts on existing consumers because of it. Simply, a veritable sea of Asian folk are discovering a taste for whiskey, especially bourbon. Simultaneously, they are acquiring the means to indulge that taste.
(more…)

Penelope Cruz makes even Campari look good. Her new calendar is the best piece of booze marketing since Christina Hendricks teamed up with Johnnie Walker. And yes, I don’t particularly like Campari…. (H/T: Camper)

The Archetypal Vodka Ad. This is three straight minutes of style and funny with P Diddy and Aziz Ansari. It also gives us the obligatory a seriously hot chick, but nary a word about any characteristics that might allegedly distinguish Ciroc from any other competitor….
(more…)

The wheels of government grind ever on, and often in the wrong direction. But every once in a great while they do eventually get where they ought to go. For instance, through a trade agreement with Brazil, the United States has agreed to recognize the category of Cachaça as a trade designation, in return for Brazil recognizing our definition of Bourbon and Tennessee Whiskeys.

I wrote extensively on the background of these negotiations, and the efforts in support of them by major cachaça brand, Leblon. Leblon has had a great deal of fun with the process, and apparently sold a great deal of fire-water along the way. In fact, I’m wondering what the heck Leblon will do to promote its product, now that they have won their “insurgent campaign”….

I note the slowness of the government’s movement on this only because the post I reference above, wherein the deal already seemed done, was written in 2009.

Blogging Rule 5, the (in)judicious use of sexy images to draw attention is considered by most to be a staple of booze advertising as well. “Sex Sells” after all, right?

This new ad from Sauza Blue Tequila, a Rule 5 treat for the female readers, illustrates perfectly an important corollary of Rule 5 for advertisers, and because it does, it is well worth watching for the guys, too.

See? Now that is funny folks. And that is what an overtly sexually-tinged booze ad has to be.

I think there are a couple of reasons for this phenomenon. First and foremost, both men and women buy hooch, and if you just do a straight appeal to below-the-gut, you will usually end up appealing to only one sex or the other. Worse, you may well end up turning off the gender not targeted. Make those folks at least laugh, and everyone feels OK.

Second, humor engages the brain, which I imagine is important to an advertiser. Effective sexual imagery kinda shuts it down, no?

Well,
the big brain at least!

If the mind is too focused on “desire”, there is little room for assessing the product on offer, which is why a lot of very sexy ads ultimately fail. Humor breaks up the focus, letting the mind wander over and ponder the ad, if only briefly. But that broadening is likely what your mind needs to remember that there is even a tequila bottle in this ad to begin with.

Plus, kittens!

I hate stupidity.
Not real stupidity, of course. Not “Bless his heart, if the poor boy could read the word ‘pull’, he’d be home to Momma by now,” stupidity. Someone who’s not very smart or educated and just trying to get though life deserves a smile, and a little help, which together makes the world a better place.
No, today I want to rant about willful stupidity. The kind of stupidity where the perpetrators are not stupid, yet only someone who genuinely is stupid could possibly fail to recognize the utter stupidity of the situation.

The specific stupidity I’m pissed at today is the process of age “verification” on the internet by companies that sell alcoholic beverages. Not only is it stupid, it is what I call Full-Spectrum Stupid. It is stupid on every level from the practice itself, to the industry, to government, all the way up to an inescapable indictment of our entire society for first-degree stupidity.

Well now!
Aren’t you the grumpy old man today!

Get off of my lawn! But allow me to elaborate first.

To begin with, the entire idea of age-verification for alcohol sites, etc. is ridiculous. Remember, on the internet, no one knows you are a dog. How can they possibly expect to know if you are 21? (The 21 year old drinking age is another issue that I deal with less angrily elsewhere.) When he was 16, Matthew Broderick nearly started World War III to impress a girl. He couldn’t slip past Brown-Foreman’s crack age check web team?

Not to contribute to the general lawlessness of the Anonymous web hackers group, but here’s the highly-complex hack that you can employ to break their iron-clad security: Enter 1970 in the year field, instead of your actual birth year, and you are right in there, little Timmy! You are free to wander the Woodbridge Reserve website and obtain all the intoxicants you want, but are too young to legally….

Oh yeah….

It is also stupid because you can’t get any booze from these websites! When Steve Jobs starts doing his inevitable keynotes from beyond the grave via iSeance, and introduces the new FireSpout port on Macintoshes that lets you dispense bourbon via the world wide web, come talk to me.

But it still might be a good idea to keep younger web surfers from exposure to booze and booze-related ideas….
No sense is offering the temptation, right?

My God! You are my friggin’ sockpuppet, Guy! How can you be so stupid?
What chance is there of a 15 year old boy bumping into the Effen Vodka website, unless he already pretty much was thinking about booze to begin with? Sure, perhaps his hitherto unblemished and pristine mind found itself at the Tuaca website by following a link at this blog, which he found by searching for “naked supermodel bodypaint” on Google, but the kid was already thinking of booze before he reached the maker, and the iron-clad security of age-verification is unlikely to wipe his mind of the contamination.

Well, it does show a commitment to not advertise to minors, at least.

Uh huh. As my Twitter bud, Andrew Hall observed, I must have missed the age-verification shutters on the gigantic, 3D, Three Olives billboards in downtown Columbus. Or the part where they ask the kids to leave the room during the Packers game while they advertise Budweiser.

Oh, I’ll send you a message alright….

So to sum, Age-Verification as generally done is stupid on its face. It doesn’t work. If it did work, it would accomplish nothing. And it wastes my time.

Even if you at least put the effort into making it seem a bit entertaining, it still sucks.

And the whole industry does this, to one extent or another! An entire industry merrily pisses off their entire customer base as if they are required by law to do so. And it is not required by law, folks.

Maybe not yet, but I’m sure their lawyers tell them they should anyway, just to cover their asses.

Whose asses? The companies’ or the lawyers’?
And besides, the whole legal indistry is showing its stupidity here. Half the lawyers out there have been trained to inflict financial pain on people and companies who not only do stupid things, but who don’t do stupid things (like waste time and energy on systems that demonstrably don’t work as nothing but lawyer repellant). The other half of lawyers are trained to sit around and think up the lawyer repellant. But they also sit around (billably) researching what lawyer repellants have been thought of by other lawyers, lest the first half of the lawyers do this:

And both halves convince themselves that all this isn’t stupid because they have to find a way to pay off the ridiculously over-priced education they took out student loans to get.

And of course, our government is stupid here, too. Sure, they haven’t mandated these age-verification screens. Yet. But they do “suggest” them….

When the government suggests things in this way, aren’t they kinda acting like the Mob suggesting that you’ve got a nice apartment building there, and you should buy insurance for it?

Exactly. Except the government has more guns. And worse, more lawyers.

Every congress-critter and senior bureaucrat thinks he has to “accomplish” things regularly to justify his exorbitant salary and opportunities for graft. And since there are only so many legitimate, non-stupid things for government to do in the first place….
Take your stupid somewhere else, boys. We are fully. stocked.

But the biggest stupidity here is displayed by…
Us.

We allow all of these stupidities to go on. We put up with this crap every day, and countless other stupidities as well. We don’t mock, ridicule, and otherwise punish this sort of stupidity anymore. We shrug our shoulders and stupidly go on with our lives.
God help me, but I usually give my actual birth date when I hit verification screens. I voluntarily give information out over the web that could be valuable in some small way to identity thieves and other miscreants.

Sounds to me like you are pretty stupid too…

Didn’t I tell you to get off my lawn?

OK, it’s beer, not real booze. Sue me.
Via Make:, we find Tuned Pale Ale. I have no idea is Tuned is a great ale. I don’t know if it tastes like pond water.
I. Don’t. Care.
The genius of Tuned is in the label. Look on the right edge and you will see a treble clef with little arrows pointing to a level of the beer within. Drink the ale down to that level, and the bottle will produce that note when you blow across the top. There are a lot of cool songs that you can play with six or fewer notes, ya know?
It’s like a Do-It-Yourself kit for awesomeness like this little performance below, only you don’t have to get as drunk as these guys to get your “instruments” set.

Now, in fact Tuned is more of a super prototype/concept design than a real product. Matt Braun, the creator, is a designer/artist (and DJ!(?)), and apparently a home brewer. He’s actually sold one batch of Tuned, and claims to have another set in production. Visit his site to sign up for your own six-pack. If you are in the beer business (or the liquor business for that matter) and like the idea, he’s also looking for someone with the cash to make this commercially viable. Let’s hope someone does.

I am a fan of Three Olives. They make a good basic vodka that is right in the price/quality saddle for vodkas. They also produce about the widest selection of flavored vodkas you can find. But this last has led them into a bit of a dicey situation.

When you have so many flavors, you need to keep coming up with new names for them. Their latest is a blend of orange and tangerine. It was therefore not a bad lexicographical blending to call the product RangTang….

Except there should be a full load class in all marketing schools that consists solely of the instructor walking around the room, bopping every student on the head with a foam bat, and screaming, Don’t forget to Google it before you release the product! This should be repeated three days a week for the semester.

By now you should be fairly curious what else RangTang might mean beyond yummy flavored vodka. You will not find that additional, prior meaning in this blog. Just click on this to do a Google search for RangTang. But before you do, be advised that you don’t need to. Really. You will anyway, but I want to be on record first, saying that concepts considered cannot be unconsidered.

I’d like to thank blame the John Rutherford of Observational Gastrophysics for getting me to consider the concept in the first place.

I’m not a huge scotch guy. I like scotch, but I’m not a huge scotch guy. I’m a Scot, but I’m not a huge…. You get the picture.

Further, when I do drink scotch, I’m usually a single malt kind of drinker. But I do always keep on hand a couple of bottles of stuff from the blender to end all blender’s—Johnny Walker. I have a bottle of Black Label, and Green Label in my Basement Bar right now. I think Johnny Walker does one of the most effective jobs of marrying high-end liquor connoisseurship with mass-market appeal of any manufacturer on Earth.

That said, they have outdone themselves with this video. Watch, and enjoy the pinnacle of liquor marketing to date.

One, single, six minute, dolly shot. Over rough terrain. With props placed at exact points in the narrative. Humor. History. Gravitas. Capitalism. Bagpipes. Bagpipe insults. And of course, Robert Carlyle.
Regardless of your views on scotch, Johnny Walker’s ownership, The Full Monty, or anything else involved here, if you don’t appreciate this video, you are a communist, or worse, a beer drinker.

So, you are drunk-blogging tonight?

Yes I am. What tipped you off?

[Sober morning UPDATE: I forgot to hat tip Mætenloch over at Ace's place for this. I really hate finding liquor-related things there before I have them!]