30 Jun 2016 Absolut Vodka: Absolutely amazing marketing

A new book, Absolut: Biography of a Bottle, outlines how the story of Absolut vodka is a perfect illustration of the con trick that is modern advertising — the creation of something out of nothing.

Carl Hamilton’s book tells how Absolut was invented back-to-front. First came a trip to Madison Avenue in 1978 to find an image.

Absolut’s image broke the rules. Even its creators thought the clear, stumpy bottle looked like a hospital plasma bag. And its ostentatiously simple, go-anywhere ads (a bottle with a bow-tie, for example, over the slogan “Absolut Elegance”) were at odds with the burnished, regional imagery that sold most booze.

Then came the high-end names. Andy Warhol painted the bottle. Among many celebrity endorsers, Annie Leibovitz photographed Salman Rushdie clutching a burning ad for Absolut.

The drink was an after-thought. Once the makers had an image, they found a white-coated scientist to devise a recipe, which was described on the bottle as being more than 400 years old.

Despite or because of its topsy-turvy birth, Absolut became a world hit. With annual sales of $3-billion, it is America’s largest imported vodka. Besides drinking it, you could use it to explain to Martians what icons are. [French group, Pernod Ricard, bought Absolut Vodka for €5.63-biillion in 2008].

Hamilton, a Swedish journalist, gives an inside glimpse into the business of imagemaking. He describes the bruised egos, the failed ideas and the sometimes less than gripping serendipity of product placement: Absolut turned up in a James Bond film because a friend of the firm knew Roger Moore.