Yes, Packaging Matters

The New York Times decided to try a blind taste test of 20 upscale, unflavored brands of vodka. Just for kicks, they through in the US best seller, Smirnoff, to see how it’d match up with its considerably more expensive competitors. The results gave Smirnoff the victory.

The prices of these vodkas ranged from a low of $13 for the Smirnoff to a high of $34 for Potocki, a Polish vodka that did not make our cut. The Belvedere also cost $34, but that was for a liter rather than the usual 750 milliliter bottle. Imported vodkas tend to cost more, partly because of taxes levied by various governments, currency exchange rates and, not least, marketing concerns: as has been proved in many industries, wine not least of all, raising the price of a product increases its status among consumers.

Super Bowl Ads: In other advertising news, it seems that everyone’s talking about the Super Bowl commercials yesterday. Personally, there weren’t any that I thought “wow,” but I think I’ll go with the Diet Pepsi ad with Cindy Crawford and the Queer Eye host staring down the hunk with the diet Pepsi as my favorite.

The WSJ liked that ad too, while the NY Times liked the FedEx one, and USA Today liked the Anheuser-Busch skydiving one. Laura Ries, daughter of branding guru Al Ries, agrees that Budweiser is the MVP of the Advertising Super Bowl.

There were number of others considered duds or at least head scratchers. I thought the Lincoln Fry and the Diana Pearl ones were quite possibly the lamest.

If you missed them, you can view them online. Still, given that it’s $80,000/second to advertise during that time slot, you have to wonder how companies justify the cost…

Update: Bloomberg.com reports that yesterday’s Super Bowl was watched in an average 43.4% of homes in the top 56 U.S. media markets according to Nielsen Media Research. The Super Bowl has been the most popular program on US tv every year since 1995.

Random Posts