Ketel One Finally Hits the Bottle

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Rick Boyko, director at the Virginia Commonwealth University Brand Center and former chief creative officer at Ogilvy & Mather, says it would be a mistake not to extend the campaign internationally. "The attitude in the ads, which does a great job of inviting the consumer into the brand rather than selling it, can translate into any language."

But just how effective has the often enigmatic advertising been in the U.S.? Between 2003 and 2006, Ketel One grew 41% in the U.S., according to Adams Liquor Handbook. That compares with 91% for category juggernaut Grey Goose. But it handily beat the 13% growth for Stolichnaya and 8% for Absolut, and at a time when more than a dozen new or recently established superpremium vodkas were fighting for shelf space. "Ketel One has done an interesting job of standing out in a category where there has been a dizzying amount of new product activity," says David Ozgo, senior vice-president of economic and strategic analysis at the Distilled Spirits Council, the liquor industry's trade group.

Advertising on Gut and Tears

The campaign's origin speaks to how much the brand runs in the veins of the Nolet family. In 2003, M&C Saatchi pitched the campaign on a single poster, lots of white space, no bottle, and a headline written in the Gothic-looking Bradley typeface: "Dear Ketel One Drinker. Thank you." CEO Eldien says Chairman Carl Nolet Sr. is very emotional about the product that's been made by his family since the 17th century and that he actually wept. Other agencies, said Eldien, showed ads that either featured brand history or sex. "The complete simplicity grabbed all of us and hit exactly the right chord," recalls Eldien.

Diageo, with $20 billion in annual revenues, a lot of brands to look after, and nearly $1 billion invested, is not known for supporting ad campaigns off a gut check. But Phil Sawyer, senior vice-president of GfK Starch, which analyzes the effectiveness of print ads, says plenty of hard evidence suggests that Ketel One's quirky approach has helped ring the register.

An interactive, if cryptic, print ad that ran in Esquire last year, carried the headline "Dear Ketel One Drinker—There comes a time in everyone's life when they just want to stop what they're doing and…" The ad, which seemed to invite readers to write in their own idea, tear out the page, and put it up in their office, generated a 66% higher rate of readers sharing the ad with others than a level most advertisers would be happy with. A bottleless ad in Vanity Fair of the "what-the-heck?" variety, with the headline "Dear Ketel One Drinker, Hello Again" and 90% white space, scored 20% above average when readers were surveyed for remembering the ad vs. other liquor ads. An ad in Golf magazine, where readers are perhaps more practical and less whimsical, though, scored well below average. "The better they match the tone of message with the different readerships of magazines, the better [the ads] seem to do," says Sawyer.

Nolet, says Eldien, gets inquiries from ad agencies almost monthly trying to poach the business from M&C Saatchi, each making their case for why the company is wasting its ad budget. But some ad agency creative executives say M&C tapped into a smart strategy in a world increasingly with ads plastered on everything from gas pumps to elevators. "All that white space gives the reader a breather and a compelling reason to engage in the ad," says Andrew Langer, chief creative officer at Roberts & Tarlow, New York. He adds, "There is an age-old battle between art director and client over white space, with the art director wanting to use it, and the client wanting to fill it."

Still, Starch's Sawyer says that it is somewhat surprising that the approach has worked in the U.S.