• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, May 10, 2011

As the centerpiece of a broader campaign, Maker's Mark Bourbon is unveiling its first national television advertising, via a major partnership with the Discovery Channel.

The TV elements of the campaign include five spots produced by Maker's Mark and its agency, Doe-Anderson (Louisville, Ky.) that will air on various Discovery Channel programming throughout the year -- starting with the May 10 season premiere of "Deadliest Catch" -- and four co-branded spots produced by the Discovery Channel that "infuse" the brand's creative. The latter will be aired to tie into the upcoming season premieres of four of the channel's top series: "Swamp Brothers," "Man Vs. Wild," "Auction Kings" and "Gold Rush."

The cross-platform Discovery Channel partnership represents 100% of Maker's Mark's 2011 television and online budget and is its largest ad buy to date with a single media entity.

In addition to television ads, it includes a suite of digital elements on Discovery.com, such as a video playlist featuring the co-branded vignettes on the channel's top fan site home pages. These will be supported by posts on the channel's Facebook and Twitter accounts (combined "likes"/followers of more than six million). Discovery will also distribute the vignettes, including a custom pre-roll, via online syndication partners such as YouTube, MSN, Fancast and Yahoo.

Print and out-of-home will remain Maker's Mark's dominant advertising media for the year. Print ads, already appearing in some issues, are in a wide range of publications, including Outside magazine and Conde Nast Traveler, and are tailored to the context of each publication, reports Kelly Doss , Maker's Mark's VP, global marketing. "We want to be a part of the conversation within each publication," Doss tells Marketing Daily.

The campaign also encompasses in-store displays and on-premises activities, with the latter focused not on promotional events but building relationships with bartenders and educating them about the brand's hand-crafting and other unique qualities, says Doss.

Why venture into TV now? While print and out-of-home have been very effective for the brand for the past five to seven years, Maker's Mark's evaluations of its marketing pointed to an opportunity to reach a broader audience with television and online and bring its "story" to life, Doss says.

That story includes its distillation process, the fact that each bottle is hand dipped (sealed with red wax) -- although it now sells 1 million cases or 12 million bottles annually worldwide -- and, most important, its originality and authenticity. A core message within the creative is that Maker's Mark's founder developed a recipe specifically to suit his own tastes: "a whiskey he would enjoy ... full-bodied but easy to drink."

Discovery Channel's core audience demographics and characteristics synch perfectly with Maker's Mark's -- men who are "social and unpretentious" and value authenticity, according to Doss, who adds that the spirit also has a large female customer base.

These brand/ audience attributes are front-and-center in the creative for the playful campaign, themed "It Is What It Isn't." All five of the (non-co-branded) Maker's Mark's spots use animation to bring the bottle to life, with a male voiceover as the bottle morphs to fit each spot's theme, ending with a reference to the spirit's founder's philosophy that "a good whiskey is what it isn't."

One already showing as a pre-roll to footage from the new season of "Deadliest Catch" on the show's site, for example, tweaks competing whiskeys by saying that while it's been suggested that Maker's Mark should change its look (graphics of the bottle being morphed into "Macho Mark Whiskey" and "Eau de Bourbon"), "we're content to spend our time hand-crafting a whiskey that's always full-bodied yet remarkably easy to drink." The spot adds: "Instead of cashing in on the next new style, we're content to have one of our own ... Like our founder said, 'A good whiskey is what it isn't.'"

Other spots' themes play off sports ("it isn't about hype ... or being the sponsor of the game ..."), fashion ("it isn't about being the latest pretty face" ...) and music ("it isn't hip-hop ... it isn't heavy metal ... and it's definitely not techno ... even though we've never been cool, we've always been us").