The Premise…. no, it’s not another reality TV show, but a competition being run by Drambuie in Australia giving you ‘One shot to create and run your own bar’ for the month of October.

Following a change in New South Wales state licensing laws in 2008, there’s been a flurry of openings of new, smaller, more initimate bars across Sydney, which has tickled its collective imagination for what a bar can be like if it’s driven by one pasionate person’s vision rather than simply a tried-and-tested formula for selling drinks.

Tapping into this, and firmly targeting opinion leaders in the booze-drinking/bar-going category, The Premise aims to introduce Drambuie to a new younger, funkier audience and to reposition the brand as a versatile and stylish cocktail ingredient by encouraging the consumers they are seeking to attract to enter their own bar concept (or ‘premise’) into a competition. The winning concept will be brought to life as a real bricks-and-mortar pop-up bar by the winner (with more than a little help from a panel of experts).

However, they haven’t completely abandoned their heritage – there is a whole section of the competition website dedicated to ‘the spirit of Drambuie’, and other pages are peppered with brand and product facts and usage suggestions.

It’s an interesting activation for Drambuie – if the right consumer finds the site, they will spend a good while reading through it, particularly if they are looking for hooks to help them create the winning concept.

But will it be enough to transform Drambuie in their minds from being that is-it-a-whisky/is-it-a-liqueur that sits at the back of their Grandma’s liquor cabinet behind the Avocaat? It remains to be seen, as the competition is still running…

The winner will be announced on 11th September, undoubtedly followed by a burst of PR when the bar itself opens in October. I’ll be watching with interest…

New regulations come into force in the US next week, banning the use of the word ‘light’ on cigarette packaging. The move is clearly based on the insight that ‘light’ connotes a healthier product to consumers  – not something that goes down well with the regulators. Marlboro’s cunning response (see below) has been to communicate heavily that consumers need only ask for the ‘Marlboros in the gold pack’ instead, but this manoeuvre is also now under investigation by the FDA.

It’s interesting news in and of itself but is made even more interesting by the fact that regulation in tobacco has in the past acted as a forewarning of impending regulation in the alcohol industry, eg. advertising bans, sports sponsorship bans etc. So it sparks the thought: what may happen to the marketing of beer in coming years, where in the US Bud Light and Coors Light outsell their standard counterparts? If the same thinking is applied to alcohol, will  we see consumers in the future having to ask for  “a Bud in the blue bottle?”. Or will Budweiser respond to this as an early warning and try to adopt a new subtler proxy for communicating the lightness of Bud Light?

Australia’s regulations have banned the use of words like ‘mild’ and ‘light’ on tobacco packaging for years now. So just as the tobacco industry may indicate the likely regulatory future for alcohol, Australian regulation has tended to act as the forerunner to regulation in the US and the wider world. So,  it’s interesting to note that the Australians are currently considering banning all on-pack branding for cigarettes, allowing only a small reference to the brand name at the bottom corner of the pack in a homogeneous typeface. As they protest the proposed move, the cigarette manufacturers are desperately trying to prepare for them, even redesigning the cigarettes themselves to act as one of the few communications media they have left. So, it’s interesting to think: will we see differently coloured beers in the future as beer cans and bottles potentially come under attack and become bland and unidentifiable?

Marketing cigarettes and alcohol used to be seen as glamorous. For marketers, at least, they’re just becoming bloody hard work!

‘Effen’, which means ’smooth’ in Dutch, is a vodka brand.

Launched in the US about four years ago, Effen is still a small brand. And while it may be preferred by a niche audience, its apparent aspiration for mass-appeal means its communications have to, above all, focus on building awareness. So as a lover of word-play, puerile humour, and smart marketing thinking, I can only congratulate them on finally succumbing to the temptation to exploit the punning potential of their name in the English language.

Their two latest ads run with the lines: “There’s nothing more satisfying than Effen on a plane” and “Nothing warms me up like Effen by the fire”. Genius.