Old Forester to be advertised

[kitzg]

According to the Wall Street Journal (Monday, July 29, 2002, page B10), Brown-Forman will invest $13 million in advertising Old Forester. There will be a limited edition bottling of Old Forester Birthday Bourbon on Sept. 2, the birthday of George Garvin Brown, founder. The advertising will run in outdoor-oriented magazines, according to the Journal. In addition, there will be an on premise promotion in upscale bars. The new ads start in August with a "Nothing Better" headling and will highlight the brand as America's First bottled bourbon.

Old Forester has barely 1% of the American whiskey market with 135,000 cases shipped in 2001 according to the newspaper while Jack Daniels Tenn. whiskey has a 28% share. (Actually the Journal refers to JD's share of the bourbon market but we all know that JD ain't bourbon).

-- Greg

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Huzzah! Happy Birthday George Garvin Brown! GOD love you! I sure do. Old Forester is one of the very best bourbons on the middle shelf. Affordable and delicious! High in rye and low in marketing hype it's a good solid bourbon for your drinking pleasure. I LUV it! Good good stuff at a good good price. Drink It Up! Yeah, Baby, Yeah!. "I'm Old Forester, and I'm awholelottabourbon!"

[kitzg]

Linn says, "... not a whole lot of marketing hype."

Well, we could consider the new "Nothing Better" slogan to be marketing hype.

That is an interesting claim since historically you have to have lots of taste tests to prove a claim of "better" but "nothing better" does not state that your product is better. It just says nothing ELSE IS better than yours. Often the government lets those claims go by since someone else would have to PROVE that there product IS better than OF.

As we all know, taste of bourbon is subjective anyway -- I mean some may like rye and others like wheat. Thus, it seems the folks at Brown-Forman and their ad agency, Price Webber Communications of Louisville, is betting they'll get away with it.

If you're Maker's Mark (Bill Samuels) you might want to challenge there's "nothing better" but I'd bet they'd need some kind of taste test to do it.

Bottom line, Beam and Maker's will outspend this little effort on Old Forester against their key customers or target anyway.

--- Greg

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Greg wrote "If you're Maker's Mark you might want to challange there's 'nothing better', but I'd bet they'd need some kind of taste test to do it." I agree Greg, and that's the very same reason Maker's Mark won't do it. Old Forester is delicious and reasonably priced. Maker's Mark isn't. But it is better than sc**ch.