By David Segal
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 30, 2007
If you live in the United States and can read, odds are good that you've noticed a series of ads that are nothing more than boldfaced words in a typeface that seems lifted from a Renaissance fair, set against an expanse of white space. Each ad conveys a brief and slightly cryptic message, such as:
Dear Ketel One Drinker
What you didn't learn in the third grade.
Or:
Dear Ketel One Drinker
Can we just say you looked great the other night.
Or:
Dear Ketel One Drinker
If you meet our new drinker, Mike, at the bar, please say hello.
That's it. No slogan. No Web site. No 800 number. A few words, then over and out.
The ads -- in lots of magazines, and all over the streets in New York and other cities -- may have prompted questions in your mind. What's with all the blank space? In the first line, why isn't there a comma after "Drinker"? Why isn't there a question mark after "other night"? Who is Mike?
And the most urgent question raised by this campaign: What can be done to make it stop?
Nothing, is the answer to the last one. The Dutch owners of Ketel One consider this, their first and only foray into U.S. advertising, a huge hit. Yes, it prompts plenty of letters from baffled readers. Yes, it has provoked merciless ribbing on ad-watching blogs, such as Copyranter.blogspot.com (Sample reaction that does not contain an obscenity: "It is cultural puke and both Ketel One and their advertising agency deserve to be hit by small tactical nuclear devices.")
But it's working. About 1.8 million cases of Ketel One vodka were sold last year, up from 1.2 million in 2003 when the campaign began, according to Adams Beverage Group, a market research firm. The brand's growth rate now exceeds that of Absolut, and it isn't just infiltrating bars and liquor cabinets. It turned up in a question on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire," was ordered by one of Tony's paisans in an episode of "The Sopranos" and has made cameos in such films as "Garden State" and "Something's Gotta Give."
All of this tickles the Nolets, the family that owns Ketel One and has been distilling booze in a small town in their native Holland for more than 300 years. A decade after the vodka's quiet introduction to the U.S. market in 1992, the family decided that it was time to mount a national ad campaign. Carl Nolet Jr., his brother Bob and their father, Carl the elder, gathered in the company's U.S. headquarters in Aliso Viejo, Calif., and listened as five advertising firms auditioned for the job. The first four pushed the same ideas: a babe in a bar, or a reverent look at the family history. Then came M&C Saatchi, which more than an hour into its presentation unveiled an oversize mock-up of a magazine page, empty but for these words:
Dear Ketel One Drinker
Thank you.
Apparently, this struck a chord.
"My dad started crying, I started crying, my brother started crying," says Carl Nolet Jr., who sounds on the phone like he's not kidding. "It was exactly what we wanted to say. It was simple, it was black and white, it was genuine."
It was the start of something really annoying.
Most advertising is a death match in which victory goes to the loudest and/or the most dazzling and/or the cleverest. It's been true for so long that consumers have fine-tuned their own internal defense system, which automatically and unconsciously spots ads and filters them out before they can register. Ketel One, or rather its ad agency, knows that. So the essential components of clutter -- color, cars, cleavage -- have been swapped for the opposite of clutter. It's like a guy in a noisy room who won't speak above the din, which tricks you into leaning in close to listen.
Then there are the messages themselves, which take a bit of history to fully explain. Initially the company portrayed the brand as the choice of what advertisers call "thought leaders," which in this case means bartenders and scenesters. Carl Jr. was dispatched to the States and given two instructions by his dad. 1) Persuade 25 restaurants and bars in New York City to carry Ketel One. 2) Sell only to those establishments willing to subject their staff to a seminar about the history and magnificence of Ketel One. That's right, no Ketel One for you until you heard the spiel -- the handmade this, the old copper that, blah blah blah. It was vodka positioned like fine wine, which was a new idea.
"Honestly, I struck out 99 times before I had one bite," says Nolet. "I'd have people say, 'Okay, I'll buy three bottles' just to get me out of the bar, and I'd say 'I'm sorry, but no. If you buy three bottles, you'll just put it in the back of the bar and that'll be it.' "
When Carl Jr. had roped in 25 restaurants, he didn't look for a 26th. Instead, he moved on to Chicago, Miami and San Francisco and did the same thing.
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!
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