Is It Time to Eighty-Six Those Ketel One Ads?

The strategy is called discovery marketing, and it's designed to give consumers the impression that they've stumbled across a secret, thanks to their excellent taste and connections. So the challenge for M&C Saatchi was the same faced by every indie rock band that signs with a major label: How do you transition from something obscure and hip to something famous and hip?

"Job one was to not alienate the customers that we had," says Jason Riley, the M&C strategic planner for the campaign. "At the same time, every brand requires growth, so we had to find a way to bring in new people."

By addressing Ketel One drinkers directly and elliptically -- and with intentional errors of punctuation -- the campaign hinted at a private conversation that non-Ketel One drinkers didn't quite grasp and might be motivated to check out. This is an appeal perfectly suited to the times. Snob appeal used to revolve around what you had that others couldn't afford; now it's what you know that others haven't heard about.

And because the underground brand can't be seen as desperate for notoriety, the ads imply that Ketel One gets how crass and irritating ads are. ("This is an advertisement for the aforementioned product," reads one appeal. "Sorry.") It's an attempt to buddy up to buyers by pretending to share their dislike for advertising. But an anti-ad is really just an ad that doesn't have the guts to admit to what it is. Hence the unwitting irony of Ketel One's notion that its campaign is somehow "genuine." To the extent that any campaign turns the brand into a person, Ketel One comes across like a slightly smug, irony-loving post-grad who's read just enough Derrida to be dangerous and wants to hit you up for cash -- but won't come right out and say so. Instead, he starts spewing non sequiturs in the hopes that you'll be intrigued enough to hand him a fiver.

Regardless, M&C says that in focus groups readers always place Ketel One high on any list of ads they saw and remembered. As for the vodka itself, its marks vary from blind taste test to blind taste test, ranking near the top of a list compiled a few years ago by Slate, deemed "routine and sharp" in a test conducted by the New York Times. (Cheapo Smirnoff came out on top of that one.) All-over-the-map results should be expected, because it's nearly impossible to distinguish among vodkas. By definition. The government's standard describes vodka as "without distinctive character, aroma, taste or color."

What sets competitors apart is image and marketing. Which suggests the text of a letter that someone ought to send to a certain town in Holland:

Dear Ketel One Distiller

We can't tell the difference!