It took about twenty minutes for me to realize that I was not the primary audience of last night's party. There was a Jameson event called The Bartenders Ball, and I tagged along with a friend for the evening. The offerings for the night started as just Jameson but then expanded to Stoli, Beefeater, Chivas, Wild Turkey, and Kahlua after midnight.
"Oh. Pernod."
The evening was an attempt to promote Pernod Ricard's key brands to the influential members of the hospitality industry. I'm not sure how necessary that was, since Jameson is the preferred spirit of the hipster class in Minneapolis. Irish whiskey in general does nicely in this market, heavily marketed by the local Irish pubs like O'Gara's and the Kieran family's bars. This weekend managed to clean out Zipp's liquor store of Jameson, Powers, and Bushmills. Those first two are the primary staples of Pernod Ricard's Irish offerings.
Pernod isn't just marketing Jameson these days. In their "white spritis" area, there's a three-pronged marketing of their top brands. Stolichnaya is reconnecting with its Russian roots by opening a faux Stoli Hotel in Los Angeles. Nobody can sleep there, but they can admire the architecture and connect Stoli the drink with the Hotel Moskva that's pictured on its label. Beefeater, the quintessential English gin, is getting a makeover to reconnect that drink with its London roots. The ad campaign and new packaging are hoping to make it less about the gin and more about the place. The third white spirit, Havana Club, is getting its own inadvertent boost from the courts of justice and public opinion. Bacardi's drive to displace Pernod's Havana Club is only drawing more non-US drinkers to the Pernod version. To extend upon an aphorism; Bacardi gave Pernod the lemons, then had to take them back to make the lemonade for Pernod to drink.
Pernod's Scotches are doing quite nicely as well. Their top-line single malt (Glenlivet) and blend (Chivas) are brand staples in their markets, so Pernod is pushing lesser known Scotches in their portfolio. Ballantines received its own makeover earlier this year and a multi-media advertising push in a few markets. Pernod is hoping to improve people's opinion of the blended Scotch it acquired from Allied Domeq in 2005. Their single malt Scotch Longmorn is slated for a redesign and a marketing push to make it an equal to Glenlivet's success.
So what does an alcologger do at a party designed for bartenders? Enjoy the music, mingle a little, and think about how much cold hard cash fills the marketing budgets of the big drinks companies.