Jump to content

The Party Source to Build a Distillery


jburlowski
This topic has been inactive for at least 365 days, and is now closed. Please feel free to start a new thread on the subject! 

Recommended Posts

It's certainly consistent with the whole '500%' thing. Why set yourself up like that? That's why 'underpromise and overdeliver' is a better approach, but I'll admit that, these days, that opinion seems to be in the minority.

Some people think it's good advertising to simply make the most grandiose claims you can imagine. It's not. It's not like they're lying or anything. They're just being stupid. An attitude of 'saying it makes it so' doesn't bode well, but it's possible they can be idiots in terms of communication and still make a good product. Overstatement does seem to be the modern approach to advertising. I don't approve, but it's very widespread.

Modesty and humility are out of fashion.

Edited by cowdery
Link to comment
Share on other sites

No dopier a name than "Buffalo Trace", imo.

I never liked the name Buffalo Trace.

Of course I am entirely wrong but that name conjures up images of the "Old West".

The Nth Degree is a little to cute for me also.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's certainly consistent with the whole '500%' thing. Why set yourself up like that? That's why 'underpromise and overdeliver' is a better approach, but I'll admit that, these days, that opinion seems to be in the minority.

Some people think it's good advertising to simply make the most grandiose claims you can imagine. It's not. It's not like they're lying or anything. They're just being stupid. An attitude of 'saying it makes it so' doesn't bode well, but it's possible they can be idiots in terms of communication and still make a good product. Overstatement does seem to be the modern approach to advertising. I don't approve, but it's very widespread.

Modesty and humility are out of fashion.

While I too prefer the 'under promise and over deliver' approach, I am not so sure that the use of "grandiose claims" in advertising is a function of "fashion", "the modern approach", or anything else going on "these days." It makes me shake my head on general principle, but I see nothing here to be disappointed (or romantic) about.

I am interested, without irony, in any explanation or representative example for this change over time in the practice of overstatement and exaggeration in advertising. As far as I can see, this is pretty much endemic to marketing everywhere and in any time. Any counter-examples to this notion I can think of are not representative but rather exceptions to the rule.

[Maybe what looks like a misconception can be likened to the misconception that music was better in previous decades. A few moments consideration will reveal that we mostly continue to play and therefore remember the better music from the past (these are the 'classics'); we forget most of the crap that came out alongside it. Of course, the good music from one era is very likely to be better than the average music of another.]

In any case, however, I would doubt 'under promise and over deliver' is statistically a better business strategy than that of making grandiose claims. If you run an average business with average products, I would think that not making grandiose claims would actually put you at a disadvantage. In order to reap the benefits of 'under promise and over deliver', you have to actually be excellent (not to mention lucky). I mean, if you promise less than average and then deliver average, do you really expect to out-compete the other guys who also make average? From a purely pragmatic perspective, I can't blame a business, which is looking at years before the first product release, for not banking too much on their future excellence.

So (so as to avoid censure for straying off topic), I will say that the advertising for Nth distillery looks pretty much par-for-the-course in any age, stylistic elements notwithstanding. In the owner's shoes, I would maybe do the same thing. Definitely if all I cared about was financial security. Only if I somehow knew for sure that my future bourbon was going to rock would I use 'under promise and over deliver'.

Edited by CoMobourbon
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's certainly consistent with the whole '500%' thing. Why set yourself up like that? That's why 'underpromise and overdeliver' is a better approach, but I'll admit that, these days, that opinion seems to be in the minority.

Some people think it's good advertising to simply make the most grandiose claims you can imagine. It's not. It's not like they're lying or anything. They're just being stupid. An attitude of 'saying it makes it so' doesn't bode well, but it's possible they can be idiots in terms of communication and still make a good product. Overstatement does seem to be the modern approach to advertising. I don't approve, but it's very widespread.

Modesty and humility are out of fashion.

I made my living in advertising and public relations for 30 years. There are a lot of laymen who think that Mad Men are some sort of evil geniuses who can make you buy anything. Some of my clients thought that, too. They wanted me to wave some magic wand and increase their sales exponentially. I tried to convince them, sometimes successfully, that really good advertising can convince a reasonable prospect to try a product or service once. If what you are selling is crap, the more people who buy it, the quicker the word spreads and your sales go in the toilet. I always tried to focus on the features, advantages, and benefits of whatever I was selling and talked clients out of making grandiose claims. Maybe that's why I never made a bazillion dollars on midnight infomercials.

AAA ain't no Stagg but it is damn good bourbon for the price.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I never liked the name Buffalo Trace.

Of course I am entirely wrong but that name conjures up images of the "Old West".

The Nth Degree is a little to cute for me also.

Glad I'm not the only one! So there was a bison trail near the distillery, big deal. Most old distilleries are in similar locations. I would be surprised if one of them WASN'T near a bison trail. They should change it back to the Geo. T. Stagg distillery. Classier.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Glad I'm not the only one! So there was a bison trail near the distillery, big deal. Most old distilleries are in similar locations. I would be surprised if one of them WASN'T near a bison trail. They should change it back to the Geo. T. Stagg distillery. Classier.

I am sitting here having a nip of early 90's AAA and I think they should change the name back to Ancient Age.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Like Flyfish, my opinion is based on 40 years as a copywriter and creative director in the advertising industry. Flyfish's experience and observation is the same as mine. And one of the reasons advertising has coarsened and become significantly more dishonest is because many clients believe as CoMoBourbon does, that advertising has always been that way. It hasn't. Now, I also recognize that my opinion is that of a 60-year-old man looking backwards, but experience is worth something. Back when I was young and idealistic, I was talking to an old burn-out like I am now. He was even standing in a stairwell, in a dirty trench coat, sucking off the last of an unfiltered Winston. "You know what a good ad is, kid?" he said, barely looking in my direction. "A good ad is a sold ad."

When advertisers became prone to switching agencies at the drop of a hat, and agencies began to give their work away in pitches, the decline became inevitable. Advertising professionals have always struggled to be viewed as professionals instead of whores, but today they are pretty much all whores.

(For the metaphorically challenged, a professional does whatever is best for the client, a whore does whatever the client wants.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have a few thoughts/questions (Chuck?) about their new venture ..

-what is the general consensus of their Master Distiller?

-given his background, is it likely they will do rye also?

-what is the likelihood that they will also source bourbon /rye?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Larry Ebersold is very highly respected. No less an authority than Jim Rutledge of Four Roses considers Ebersold to be the best living master distiller. The question is whether or not Larry is really coming out of retirement to run this place day to day. I understood he is consulting for them. Although retired, he seems pretty young (I don't know his actual age) so maybe he is. I don't know. It's a couple years away so, like everything else with Nth, we have to wait and see.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When advertisers became prone to switching agencies at the drop of a hat, and agencies began to give their work away in pitches, the decline became inevitable. Advertising professionals have always struggled to be viewed as professionals instead of whores, but today they are pretty much all whores.

(For the metaphorically challenged, a professional does whatever is best for the client, a whore does whatever the client wants.)

Yikes...so true...and pervasive now among too many professionals that were always considered professionals...lawyers, accountants, journalists and yes even doctors among others.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Like Flyfish, my opinion is based on 40 years as a copywriter and creative director in the advertising industry. Flyfish's experience and observation is the same as mine. And one of the reasons advertising has coarsened and become significantly more dishonest is because many clients believe as CoMoBourbon does, that advertising has always been that way. It hasn't. Now, I also recognize that my opinion is that of a 60-year-old man looking backwards, but experience is worth something. Back when I was young and idealistic, I was talking to an old burn-out like I am now. He was even standing in a stairwell, in a dirty trench coat, sucking off the last of an unfiltered Winston. "You know what a good ad is, kid?" he said, barely looking in my direction. "A good ad is a sold ad."

When advertisers became prone to switching agencies at the drop of a hat, and agencies began to give their work away in pitches, the decline became inevitable. Advertising professionals have always struggled to be viewed as professionals instead of whores, but today they are pretty much all whores.

(For the metaphorically challenged, a professional does whatever is best for the client, a whore does whatever the client wants.)

Fair enough. 40 years is almost twice as long as I have been alive, and there is no argument more compelling or well grounded than that which derives from experience. As a 23 year old masters student entering his first full time job, I have nothing so concrete as specific experience to draw from, and I really appreciate answers based on 30-40 years of it.

I guess most of my (admittedly speculative} argument comes from what I consider some pretty sound general observations. For example, people have always griped and fretted about societal decay since the beginning of human society, but amid all of these warnings about regression, society has always progressed by leaps and bounds, negative side effects notwithstanding. No one can seriously say that society has not improved from its condition over the last several thousand years (from a time when you feared murder and enslavement from the family on the over side of the hill). But thousands of years ago, people also worried about ongoing systemic moral and social collapse. Read any religious text, or really almost anything, contemporary to this vestigial state of continuous primal war. This would be funny, but the same is clearly true today as well; romantic and nostalgic people pine for the moral decency and social order of 50 years ago and willfully ignore the profound improvements we have achieved in the intervening decades.

Also, there is the whole (unaddressed) 'oldie music is the best' observation to consider. Over time, people have a tendency to compare present averages and low-points against past positives - while at the same time forgetting or disregarding all of the past averages and low points. The highlights of the past will always beat the averages of the present, but the past is not necessarily better as a whole because of this disparity.

This is all to explain why I was skeptical that advertising could really be morally better 40 years ago - as your "whore" / "professional" binary suggests. There are always unwelcome side effects to institutional change, but, generally, institutional change doesn't make things worse on the whole, regardless of the grouchiness (dare I say crotchety-ness? [smiley-face implied]) of those who experienced that change. Advertising may very well represent an anomaly in this case - you saw it, I didn't - but I hope you can understand such anomalies are hard for me to imagine. In any case, I (graciously, I hope?) concede the point.

Edited by CoMobourbon
Link to comment
Share on other sites

And in any case, the only thing to do about Nth distillery is to wait and see as several people have suggested.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You're right too. I agree with everything you wrote.

I certainly agree that looked at in the broadest way possible, humans have generally made a better job of things as we have gone forward, but that doesn't mean there aren't setbacks. I believed 20-30 years ago that at least some advertising deserved at least some respect. Today I believe very little of it does.

One thing that I think has changed is that younger people today seem shocked whenever someone has the temerity to correct them. Not everybody all of the time, but I make that as a general observation. When you can't tell people they're wrong, on general priciples, it's very hard to change their minds. Honest persuasive speech has been handicapped, and replaced with dishonest persuasive speech.

I recognize that my perspective as a 60-year-old is different from what my perspective was when I was 25. But I can't help it. My observations and conclusions are what they are.

But back to the original issue, I'm 60 but I'm not dead, and I still have money to spend. If advertisers don't take me and people like me into consideration, they'll lose our business to people who do. That hasn't changed.

Edited by cowdery
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Larry Ebersold is very highly respected. No less an authority than Jim Rutledge of Four Roses considers Ebersold to be the best living master distiller. The question is whether or not Larry is really coming out of retirement to run this place day to day. I understood he is consulting for them. Although retired, he seems pretty young (I don't know his actual age) so maybe he is. I don't know. It's a couple years away so, like everything else with Nth, we have to wait and see.

I agree with Chuck. Everyone I know in the industry thinks Larry is certainly among the most well qualified distillers in the US. He's a sharp, impressive guy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One thing that I think has changed is that younger people today seem shocked whenever someone has the temerity to correct them. Not everybody all of the time, but I make that as a general observation. When you can't tell people they're wrong, on general priciples, it's very hard to change their minds. Honest persuasive speech has been handicapped, and replaced with dishonest persuasive speech.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Generation war, baby! No mercy for the boomers! We got our entitlement and arrogance ourselves, and we're proud of it! (Horray for thread drift!)

No, I get it though. I would contest many presumptions that boomers carry about those punk-a**, lazy, entitled Gen Y's, presumptions which have been promulgated on this site from time to time (by others not participating in this discussion). But to the extent that it is even possible to generalize about the culture of millions of very disconnected people, I will say that Gen Y is definitely not without its own sins, and obstinacy is perhaps one of them. But I think that its obstinacy is actually born of insecurity and denial of that insecurity more than any other cause. We are perhaps the most epistemologically shaken-up bunch of young people ever, and we are shaken-up in a way that I think Boomers don't quite understand. (The Boomers' revolutions replaced dominant entrenched cultural ideologies with other cultural ideologies; Gen Y is more and more giving up on coherent/unified ideologies altogether.) We are not sure what to believe or even of the basis of valid beliefs. In this dilemma, the only real recourse is to cling to what our peers believe, whether those beliefs manifest themselves in niche sub-cultures or in the mainstream. This annoys everybody for pretty good and straightforward reasons.

Edited by CoMobourbon
Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.