case study - · pdf filecase study smirnoff nightlife exchange / ... the reward for the vodka...

CASE STUDY Smirnoff Nightlife Exchange /

This article appeared in Contagous issue Twenty Six.

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1st Page.indd 1 03/03/2011 14:34

case study / smirnoff / nightlife exchange project /

the mix factor

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case study / smirnoff / niGHtLife eXcHanGe ProJect / tHe miX factor / tHe brand tHat’s aLways ready for a Party, smirnoff Has used facebook to attract a two miLLion-stronG crowd of Like-minded foLk across tHe GLobe. in 2010, it went a staGe furtHer. it asked its facebook fans for ideas for unforGettabLe niGHts out. tHe resuLt was tHe niGHtLife eXcHanGe ProJect: 14 eVents aLL Hosted on 27 noVember 2010. tHis year, it Has boosted its diGitaL sPend by 115% to imProVe tHat eXPerience for 2011. wHetHer it’s in a cocktaiL sHaker, a niGHtcLub or onLine, smirnoff is sure to be miXinG it uP / by Lucy aitken /

contagious 48 / 49


‘I f you weren’t at one of smirnoff’s ravishing nightlife exchange Project parties, then where the bloody hell were you?’ delicately asked australian blog Lost at e minor following smirnoff’s global event on 27 november 2010. some 18,000 party-goers attended 14 nights dotted across the globe, inspired by 33,000 user-generated suggestions for an unforgettable night out in their country. those suggestions were subsequently packed up in a crate and exported to a twin city for the night. a taste of the evening’s festivities? freestyle footballers and samba drummers infused sydney with a brazilian carnival atmosphere; electro star Peaches teamed up with south african group Gazelle to perform a track specifically co-written for the berlin event; miami swapped with London for the night; while dublin’s pub culture took to the streets of buenos aires.

this was an ambitious undertaking, demanding military precision and phenomenal behind-the-scenes communication on the part of smirnoff’s agencies. the reward for the vodka brand came in the few days following the event, when a flood of compliments on blogs and social media – and particularly facebook – would have made even the most experienced party host squeal with joy. Here’s a typical selection: ‘best night of my life!!’, ‘awesome night… just wanted to party through till next weekend.’ and ‘well done smirnoff.’

well done smirnoff indeed. as brand managers are beginning to realise, it’s tough to be chatty on social networks and persuade people to engage with your brand without coming across as creepy or try-hard. but smirnoff and its two million helpers across its facebook pages embody the participation and the seamless flipping between virtual and real world environments that so many brands seek to engender. Happily for smirnoff, its target market is only too eager to get involved and be a stakeholder in co-creating colossal nights out.

From Moscow to Mule

Pyotr smirnov founded his vodka distillery in moscow in the 1860s. today, parent brand diageo claims smirnoff is the world’s leading premium spirit, selling ten bottles every second or 24.5 million nine-litre cases every year, the majority to the us. in the uk, its most recent on-trade market share, according to ac nielsen, is 63.7%, while off-trade is 36%. yet off-trade is proportionally a much larger market, making its overall british market share just under 40%. it has successfully extended its brand into flavoured and ready-to-drink variants, including smirnoff mule and smirnoff ice.

in 2010, the consultancy intangible business named smirnoff the world’s leading alcoholic drinks brand in terms of financial contribution and consumer perception. yet the report warned that the brand faces some stiff competition from both premium and more affordable



contagious 50 / 51


alternatives: ‘“smirnoff the untouchable” has become “smirnoff the vulnerable”... [due to an] inevitable decline in volume... it faces fresh challenges at the top end from absolut, and others such as russian standard, skyy and Grey Goose. it is also being undermined from below, from the likes of svedka – the highest new entrant in 2010 – and eristoff... smirnoff will have to fight hard.’

Be There

Part of smirnoff’s battle plan is engaging with youth and music. stuart whitwell, joint managing director at intangible business, observes: ‘ever since absolut hit the scene, vodka promotions have been targeting the university set. Grey Goose and russian standard both do it, but smirnoff is one of the most successful of all time.’

facebook has become a major part of smirnoff’s arsenal. across its regionalised facebook pages, the brand’s target market is relentlessly on parade, making the social network akin to a virtual bar or club, minus the bouncers or the cloakroom queue. what’s more, those who befriend smirnoff on facebook tend to be either ‘confident communicators’ or ‘digital obsessives’, to use diageo-speak. regardless of which category they fall into, they’re on facebook multiple times a day and, as soon as they experience something – a gig, a festival, a gap year – they rush onto the network to boast ‘i was there’.

in the summer of 2009, smirnoff shifted strategy to reflect its target’s growing facebook dependency with two words: ‘be there’. amy frisch, global business director at Jwt, new york, which has worked with smirnoff for over a decade and for the last two years has led ‘be there’, reveals that smirnoff’s umbrella strategy came from a simple insight: ‘our target audience wants to be part of original, memorable nights and we wanted to champion participation in them.’ she adds: ‘our brief is about giving consumers experiences which will keep the conversation going.’

this is a point worth making at a time when so many brands are playing a numbers game to rack up large facebook fan bases. many brands manage to successfully start conversations with consumers, but then fail to maintain that engagement on a long-term basis. the equivalent in the real world would be asking

someone ‘how are you?’ and then covering your ears and walking away.

as michelle klein, smirnoff’s new york-based VP global content and communications, points out: ‘a lot of brand managers have annual personal targets in terms of building a facebook community, but we’re focusing on keeping them there. no question goes unanswered, from “where can i buy a particular flavour?” to “i saw this ad and want to know what the music was”.’ smirnoff is also super-responsive, setting itself a maximum 12-hour deadline in which to reply to questions and criticism.

splendid, a communications company based in London, new york and sydney, works closely with smirnoff on the brand’s facebook presence. niki Hunter ekins, associate director at splendid in London, reveals that the agency team has the autonomy to answer questions that are posed to the brand’s facebook page and to communicate information about upcoming events. yet if there is a more specific query, the standard procedure would be for splendid to respond to the facebook fan with a pledge to find out and respond later. in that instance, the agency would involve diageo.

this kind of agility is vital if brands want to have a future on facebook. as neil skinner, smirnoff Gb’s marketing manager, asserts: ‘if you want to live on social media you have to respond like a consumer.’

Renewed and refreshed

Just like its target consumers, smirnoff has its own facebook dependency to manage. Log onto the us page and the ‘i choose’ tab enables you to upload a photo for the chance to be the brand’s fan of the week profile picture. this came off the back of the People’s challenge, a series of tasting sessions across the us which pitted smirnoff against its more expensive rivals. smirnoff confidently embarked on this road trip having been named the ‘hands down favourite’ in The New York Times following a blind tasting session by a panel of experts. there are two incentives to Like; a downloadable $5 coupon for a 1.75l bottle and the chance to appear in an ad campaign if you participate in ‘i choose smirnoff’.

over on the british facebook page, there’s a range of events showing smirnoff’s energy and enthusiasm for an original party. smirnoff Paintfest last summer saw 2,000 students in six uk cities hitting the dance floor throbbing with dubstep and electro beats while cannons fired luminous paint onto their white boiler suits and goggles. nearly all – 96% – of attendees said they would relish another opportunity to drink smirnoff and be splashed with paint. students, eh?

2009’s ur the night is also documented. a precursor to nightlife exchange Project (neP), ur the


‘Our brief is about gving consumers experiences which will kep the conversation going.’


contagious 52 / 53


night invited smirnoff’s facebook fans to share their suggestions for a night out in return for a ticket to the evening’s star-studded line up which included Pet shop boys, Little boots and dJ sets from Hot chip and tom middleton. facebook fans were keen to suggest ideas for playlists and smirnoff-based cocktails which were then woven into the event.

and there’s a wealth of photos and comments on neP, an idea which smirnoff worked on with a host of agencies including lead ad shop Jwt, splendid communications (Pr), Virtue (experiential), akQa (digital), dei worldwide (social), mrm (relationship marketing). mtV was the media partner.

NEP 2011: The sequel

neP will happen again in 2011. in fact, in January 2011, diageo announced that it was upping digital spend on smirnoff by 115% chiefly to support the project’s return. skinner promises: ‘we’re already looking at how we can improve neP globally. there are so many great opportunities to improve things and make it more exciting and involving, perhaps outside of capital cities.’

there’s been a clear business benefit: ‘neP has moved needles which have been difficult to move in the past,’ he adds. tracking measures have shown that people we know well on our facebook pages – who start with a higher level of brand affinity – have been engaged and excited by the programme, and people we know who we’ve been heavily involved with have helped give us a steer in terms of what we can optimise and strengthen. our qualitative research involved working with a few recruits who kept an internal blog of how they saw the campaign unfolding and that also gave us the

chance to change things. this belt and braces approach to evaluation gave us a good balance.’

another aspect of neP in London was an rfid tag embedded into wristbands which enabled party-goers to post instantly to their facebook walls and comment that they liked Zane Lowe’s set, or the particular cocktail they were drinking. some 88% of attendees interacted with the technology, making it a strong likelihood that rfid will play a prominent role in neP 2011.

the miami-inspired neP in London also hosted the dramatic finale of Master of the Mix, a smirnoff-sponsored dJ talent show which had been running in the us. an eight-part series which was broadcast both online and on two tV networks, bet and centric, culminated at neP in London where the two finalists, dJ scratch and Vikter duplaix, went record-shopping in soho with Grandmaster flash, paused for a smirnoff cocktail (amid lingering bottle shots) before competing on the decks at the neP event at troxy in east London in front of an X Factor-style jury.

London’s neP was also billed heavily on the smirnoff-sponsored Time Out iPhone app which was introduced in december 2009 as a way to access listings in the city with ease. other apps in which smirnoff has invested include an augmented reality experience embedded on

‘Nightlife Exchange Projec has moved nedles which have ben dificult to move in the pas.’



contagious 54 / 55

germany /ireland /argentina /

brazil /india /usa /

canada /great britain /thailand /

australia /


limited edition bottles available in travel outlets in summer 2010. when the special code is activated, a bottle of smirnoff appears on a smartphone screen and an animated party scene comes to life out of the bottle.

Mass and risk

smirnoff can pull off an ambitious stunt like neP because the brand is ubiquitous. as stuart whitwell points out: ‘everyone drinks it everywhere, from high end hotels to grubby back streets in the Philippines. it’s got mass appeal.’

yet the flip side of being so popular is occasionally coming under attack. smirnoff experienced this first-hand when its ready-to-drink product smirnoff ice became the subject of a craze called bros icing bros in 2010. icing is a drinking game that started out in us college campuses and then spread. the premise?

if you don’t have a bottle of smirnoff ice on you, you have to glug the bottle that’s presented to you. sales of smirnoff ice in some college towns reportedly sky-rocketed – particularly among frat boys who hadn’t traditionally been smirnoff ice drinkers. diageo hotly denied any involvement and as brosicingbros.com was shut down, a terse official statement said: ‘“icing” does not comply with our marketing code, and was not created or promoted by diageo.’

the episode highlighted, however, that no matter how committed brands are to behaving responsibly, digital media and mischievous minds can facilitate the undermining of good work. smirnoff, like all its sister diageo brands, makes csr and responsible drinking a key part of its communications mix: in the us, for instance, 20% of diageo’s brand broadcast advertising budget is dedicated to messages promoting responsible choices about drinking – or not drinking.

in a world of content sharing and curveball viral hits, no brand can ever be totally protected from activity affecting their brand perception.

Will you be there?

smirnoff maintains engagement with its target and is consistent in its communication in both real and virtual worlds. as uri baruchin, a senior consultant at Landor associates in London, points out: ‘target audiences do not distinguish between media channels, so why should brands? combining the relative strengths of each medium, smirnoff can create a stronger, more memorable impression.’

‘Target audiences do not disinguish betwen media channels, so why should brands?’



contagious 56 / 57

challenge / the world’s most popular vodka needed to stay relevant in a sector saturated with both new premium and lower price-point brands, particularly constellation brands’ svedka which, in 2010, was the fastest-growing spirits brand in the us, smirnoff’s biggest market. smirnoff needed to protect its global sales of 24.5 million nine-litre cases every year by maintaining its appeal for existing and future generations and renewing itself by effectively engaging with youth culture and music /

Solution / smirnoff, through JWt, new york, launched a new strategy in 2009 called be there. this formed the backbone of all its communications, and is centred on providing one-of-a-kind experiences to smirnoff’s young and up-for-it crowd. investment in local Facebook pages has now made smirnoff’s Facebook presence the largest in the vodka category, with a combined global population of two million. the brand has leveraged its Facebook popularity through events such as 2010’s nightlife exchange Project (neP), which aimed to celebrate the best of the world’s nightlife by canvassing the opinions of smirnoff’s mighty Facebook community. smirnoff was also an early adopter of smartphone apps: it partnered time Out back in 2009 on delivering up-to-the minute advice on the best and most original nightlife in london. in the us, it worked with JWt, new york on an augmented reality app which was embedded into the bottle design for duty-free sales /

reSultS / some 33,000 people contributed ideas for neP and 18,000 attended the events themselves. Post-event, social media and blogs glowed with positive feedback and smirnoff has pledged to run neP for a second time in 2011, upping its year-on-year digital spend by 115% to improve on the event experience. the investment is timely: smirnoff still needs to work hard to maintain its position, particularly as its young target market is more cash-strapped than ever and could switch to cheaper alternatives /

analySt inSight / Smirnoff /by steven Van belleghem / insites consulting /

challenge / Solution / reSultS / Smirnoff /

From bonding to serenading by fueling the conversation

insites consulting recently conducted a cross-category study in which we captured the total number of online and offline conversations to better understand their impact. we questioned a few thousand respondents using an online survey with a diary function and asked them to describe conversations they had about brands.

to map consumer conversations, we take into account three dimensions: the tone, the impact and the volume of the conversations. based upon these three axes, we mapped the different categories (see figure).

if you look at the position of alcoholic beverages, diageo’s market, it isn’t bad, but it isn’t good either. the volume of conversations is quite high, the tone of voice is quite good, but impact is low. People are sharing positive brand experiences, but they don’t influence each other. they are actually bonding instead of influencing.

if you look at smirnoff, there are a number of dimensions in this case study that could boost the influence of the conversations. firstly, smirnoff is fueling the conversation. it is giving its fans something to talk about. most spirits just let the word-of-mouth take place in an organic form. if you act remarkable, people will speak about you in a remarkable way, which increases the impact. next, smirnoff is joining the conversation, answering direct questions from consumers, which increases the emotional bond between consumer and brand. if the consumer is more emotionally involved with the brand, the impact of conversations increases as well.

our research shows that brands can manage conversations. fueling them by your acts, engaging with consumers, offering branded utility are all ways to increase the impact of the conversation. too many companies look only at positive versus negative, but remember that most positive conversations are worthless if they don’t change people’s opinion.

Steven Van Belleghem is managing partner at marketing research consultancy Insites Consulting and author of the conversation manager. www.insites.eu / @Steven_insites

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despite its place as the world’s leading premium spirit, with 24.5 million cases sold a year (that’s ten bottles a second) and successful brand extensions into flavoured and ready-to-drink variants, including smirnoff mule and smirnoff ice, in 2010 intangible business warned that the diageo-owned brand faces threats from premium and lesser alternatives: ‘“smirnoff the untouchable” has become “smirnoff the vulnerable”... [due to an] inevitable decline in volume.’ absolut, russian standard, skyy, grey goose, svedka and eristoff are the main challenger brands in this highly competitive space. the company Pyotr smirnov founded in moscow in the 1860s had transformed into a massive brand, and now had a global set of challenges to go along with its reach. What’s the battle plan? a potent combination of partying and participation.

02 / organiSation & oBSeSSionS

the brand’s target market is relentlessly on parade, making the social network akin to a virtual bar or club, minus the bouncers or the cloakroom queue. those who befriend smirnoff on Facebook tend to be either ‘confident communicators’ or ‘digital obsessives’ – in other words, they are on Facebook multiple times a day. as soon as they experience something – a gig, a festival, a gap year – they rush onto the network to boast ‘i was there.’ smirnoff shifted strategy to reflect its target’s growing Facebook dependency with two words: ‘be there’. the challenge for agencies and partners is to figure out how to be there with the fans, both in providing content and answering any questions that might arise from the flock.

03 / choiceS & challengeS

smirnoff’s social media offerings span a range of engagement levels and activity types. From a profile picture tool spawned from its People’s challenge, to coupons and incentives, to live innovations like Paintfest, there are multiple points for fans to engage, all of which have been developed to maintain the enthusiasm of its audience. nightlife exchange Project (neP), the most successful iteration, pulled together 33,000 suggestions for an unforgettable night out, exchanged among 18,000 party-goers in 14 nights dotted across the globe. Freestyle footballers and samba drummers infused sydney with a brazilian carnival atmosphere; electro star Peaches teamed up with south african group gazelle to perform a track specifically co-written for the berlin event; miami swapped with london for the night; while dublin’s pub culture took to the streets of buenos aires.

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04 / equality & exchange

building on its initial successes, neP is back for another year, with a stronger digital spend behind it and improvements afoot. diageo asserts the effort has been responsible for a healthy boost in favourable metrics. brand affinity is up. Optimisation and strengthening among core audiences is taking place, and the drinks company saw promising engagement in the more experimental parts of the project, like the use of rFid wristbands. neP combined with other smirnoff programmes for maximum effect — the finale of the masters of the mix dJ talent show took place in london, while the event also benefitted from heavy billing in the smirnoff-sponsored time Out iPhone app.

05 / BroaDSiDeS & BroS

smirnoff can pull off an ambitious stunt like neP because the brand is ubiquitous; it can fire massive broadsides in many different directions. yet, occasionally it is a victim of its own success. its ready-to-drink product smirnoff ice randomly became the subject of a craze called bros icing bros, which began in the united states in 2010. the episode highlighted that no matter how committed brands are to behaving responsibly, digital media and mischievous minds can undermine acres of good work and noble intentions. to its credit smirnoff, like all its sister diageo brands, makes csr and responsible drinking a key part of its communications mix: in the us, for instance, 20% of diageo’s brand broadcast advertising budget is dedicated to messages promoting responsible choices about drinking – or not drinking.

06 / StaBility & SocialiSation

smirnoff integrates itself into the lives of its targets, that’s what it’s trying to do and that’s what it’s going to keep doing, wherever that takes place. it’s a stable brand, with premium and value brands coming at it from both sides in a busy product category, and it still comes out on top, in both real and virtual worlds. as uri baruchin, a senior consultant at landor associates in london, points out: ‘target audiences do not distinguish between media channels, so why should brands? combining the relative strengths of each medium, smirnoff can create a stronger, more memorable impression.’ the challenge will be continuing to respond with agility to new platforms, while maintaining core programmes that loyalists can consistently use to interface with the brand.

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contagious 58 / 59

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maSS appeal

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rfiD reDux


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