Painfully bad Woodford Advertising

[ramblinman]

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%23woodfordway

I'm not sure what they're getting at or who they're marketing toward. But if the big boys start putting out ads like this we won't have to worry about the low supply nearly as much

[benpearson]

This is an ad campaign for the ladies. I'm all for women drinking more bourbon.

[upStomp]

I commend them for at least...aww, who am I kidding? Those were all pretty crappy.

And now I'm going to be hearing lame Beatnik drums in my sleep.

[Josh]

I saw that last night. I don't really understand it, but it's not all that bad. Better than the Dewar's ads.

[zillah]

So, is Woodford for cool people? Is that what I am getting here?

[squire]

Throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks.

[Quantum]

I always measure first before I buy wood for a bookshelf. I guess I'm not a Woodford man. I better not confuse the ladies by drinking Woodford again.

[Richnimrod]

Comment? ...LAME! :slappin:

But, hey, I'm not the one paying for the ads, nor apparently, the target demographic; so, I say: "Rave on fools!" :bigeyes:

I care little-to-nothing about it, ...about as much as I care for their over-priced Bourbon.

[TunnelTiger]

These adds just go to prove that a competent marketing team knows what they are going.

We aren't the target. it is not aimed at us.

[risenc]

Also, not to state the obvious, but the ad succeeded because this week, for better or worse, everyone's talking about Woodford. And sure, it probably offended a few folks. But those people were unlikely to drink Woodford anyway. Meanwhile, it hits at that perfect intersection between artisan hipsters and middle-class hicks (sorry for the stereotypes, but you know what I mean).

[squire]

Clay is there some pervasive thought in the advertizing community that Bourbon is for hicks, middle class or otherwise?

[IBLSKeith]

On this morning's Today Show they had a story about the mint juleps that will be available at the Kentucky Derby. You have a choice of either $1,000 per drink or $2,000 per drink....but they let you keep the cup and a box made from a barrel stave.

The Woodford bottle was prominently displayed.

Those must be mighty nice cups!

Keith

[Tony Santana]

There have to be some stats out there somewhere. I don't know about "hicks", but I'd guess the great majority of bourbon drinkers are no more than middle class on the socio-economic scale, and rarely look above belt high when examining the selection at a well-stocked liquor store. We are the outliers. For folks like that, a Woodford or Makers or Knob Creek is something to be bought for a special occasion. These commercials are trying to attract those folks, getting them to trade up from their usual - not aimed a bunch of guys who hang out on bourbon websites debating the root cause of barrel shortages and reading the tea leaves of font size on Vintage 17 bottles.

[Josh]

There have to be some stats out there somewhere. I don't know about "hicks", but I'd guess the great majority of bourbon drinkers are no more than middle class on the socio-economic scale, and rarely look above belt high when examining the selection at a well-stocked liquor store. We are the outliers. For folks like that, a Woodford or Makers or Knob Creek is something to be bought for a special occasion. These commercials are trying to attract those folks, getting them to trade up from their usual - not aimed a bunch of guys who hang out on bourbon websites debating the root cause of barrel shortages and reading the tea leaves of font size on Vintage 17 bottles.

Ha! I love that last sentence.

[ramblinman]

Also, not to state the obvious, but the ad succeeded because this week, for better or worse, everyone's talking about Woodford. And sure, it probably offended a few folks. But those people were unlikely to drink Woodford anyway. Meanwhile, it hits at that perfect intersection between artisan hipsters and middle-class hicks (sorry for the stereotypes, but you know what I mean).

You know, every time anything related to marketing is discussed this comes up and I don't buy it. Talking about something negatively within a group of people who mostly all respond negatively isn't a positive.

Either way, they can certainly market however they want to, and maybe have some success at it, but stuff about man building a bookshelf without doing math and a woman using a saw without knowing how, the phrase "thorny mess" is just odd and sounds like a lengthened Jack Handy SNL skit.

[squire]

I'm waiting for someone to hold a bottle of V17 up in the Sunlight at just the right angle to determine if there's a code under the code.

[Quantum]

I'm not the best with codes, but if you send a sample to me, I can tell you with 100% certainty whether I like it or not. I can identify it as wheat vs rye with at least 50% certainty. Outside of that, I have nothing useful to add.

[Harry in WashDC]

Advertising Age's website at http://adage.com/article/see-the-spot/woodford-reserve-s-bourbon-ad-liberate-discriminate/292648 has a nice discussion of the "sexist" criticism leveled by some bloggers right after the shelf builder spot appeared during Mad Men. The BF exec responsible for the ad campaign defended it by saying, among others things, that the critics are missing the point of the ad. She also pointed out that the campaign's creators are mostly women. The shelf builder is just the 1st of a series to run through May. All can be watched via adage.com [deleted rest of sentence because it was wrong].

I guess an ad campaign whose viewers miss its point can be considered a success. It got US to talk about it.

After watching them all, I'm guessing they are targeting the party-hearty club-goers. That's about the age I was when I found out that bourbon was more than my Dad's Old Crow. And considering the # of SBers on the recent WW thread who started w/WW, BFmay have a good campaign.

Edited April 15, 2014 by Harry in WashDC
Corrected incorrect watching statement.

[Tony Santana]

I'm waiting for someone to hold a bottle of V17 up in the Sunlight at just the right angle to determine if there's a code under the code.

Someone on this forum has probably done so, squire. As your tagline states, we're bourbon geeks. That's the point, and it's why this advertising isn't aimed at us.

I like to think I have varied interests, and I know a little bit about a lot of things. But I feel pretty safe in saying I know more than at least 99% of the population about bourbon, the sport of curling and the Grateful Dead. There are more subcultures than we can imagine out there. Scottish terriers, knitting, artisanal sausages, milk bottles, model trains, Nabokov novels . . . . name what most would deem to be an obscure subject and you can find people who obsess over it. Mass advertising ain't geared to the geeks, the compulsives and the fetishists.

I tend to glaze over when I hit the commercial breaks on TV anyway. I watch Mad Men and I didn't even notice the Woodford commercial.

[squire]

The BF exec responsible for the ad campaign defended it by saying, among others things, that the critics are missing the point of the ad. She also pointed out that the campaign's creators are mostly women.

So it's the women who think we're hicks. That's hick profiling and I resent it.

[TunnelTiger]

So it's the women who think we're hicks. That's hick profiling and I resent it.

I know it's not politically right to say but MrsTT and I are both hicks and damn proud of it. :cool:

[Flyfish]

[quote

I guess an ad campaign whose viewers miss its point can be considered a success.

.

[Harry in WashDC]

Well, I'm still not sure they're targeting hicks, whatever those are; I think they're targeting 25-35 YOs with debitcards regardless of gender or actual experiences but who will buy in to - "Only REAL people who do REAL things may drink our REAL stuff!". Who, I ask rhetorically, wants to be UNREAL?

If I were 40 years younger, I might start drinking WW and offering it to women sitting near me to see if they are my kind of women - just like the 2nd commercial hints they'd be if they like it. But, I'm not 40 years younger and know better than to judge women by what they drink, so I'll just sit there sipping on the 4RSmB I talked the bartender into keeping on hand for me and not share it with anybody who doesn't already know about it. I'm also married, and she now likes bourbon, too. It took years, but . . .

ASIDE: I just love this kind of discussion thread. There's no right or wrong but LOTS of entertaining comments.

[squire]

Harry if we were forty years younger the women would be sipping white wine and we would be drinking Harvey Wallbangers.

[Harry in WashDC]

Oh, yeah. That IS what we drank 40 years ago.