Are Beam’s latest moves good bets?

July 1, 1:31 PMChicago Drinks ExaminerCharles Cowdery

Previous Next

2 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Chicago Drinks Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

 

You should never bet against Beam Global Spirits and Wine. You will rarely win.

Only two American straight whiskeys are major international spirits brands. Jim Beam is one of them. Twice in its history, the Beam company has more than doubled in size by absorbing a major rival. As a marketing and sales juggernaut, Beam makes few mistakes. It is bold when it needs to be, but seldom reckless.

Generally, those folks in Deerfield know what they’re doing.

Three recent moves deserve examination in the context of Beam’s legendary marketing and sales savvy. They are the introduction of Red Stag by Jim Beam, a new PR campaign for Knob Creek Bourbon, and last week’s acquisition of Effen Vodka from Sazerac.

We’ll look at Red Stag today, Knob Creek tomorrow, and Effen on Friday.

The risk with Red Stag, a combination of Jim Beam Bourbon, black cherry and other natural flavors, was that it would hurt the company’s flagship brand by making it seem less hand-crafted and more manufactured, like a flavored vodka.

Predictably, some purists objected. The flavoring of whiskey is a touchy subject due to the long, sad history of counterfeit hooch, similar to what we now call blends but which were—a century ago—misrepresented as straight whiskey. Red Stag, which is more like a pre-mixed cocktail, has nothing to do with all that, but the combination of ‘flavoring’ and ‘whiskey’ still brings out those passions.

The attractive origin story for Red Stag involves a Beam R&D guy at the Kentucky distillery, who would mix up something like Red Stag to take deer hunting, which also accounts for the name (much as Wild Turkey was named after a wild turkey hunt). The marketing folks concede that their research discovered the target demographic (young adult males, of course) already mixes Jim Beam with cherry cola, so Beam and cherry wasn’t a stretch.

Red Stag is still deep in the sampling phase of its national rollout so it will be months before its fate is known.

While Red Stag can be viewed as something conventional in consumer product marketing terms, a line extension launch; the new Knob Creek campaign is very much abnormal. That’s tomorrow.