• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, May 1, 2007

Stolichnaya vodka, the best-selling Russian vodka in the U.S., is opening a hotel in Los Angeles this week, with a 1,500-guest capacity, a working spa, and guest rooms themed to its various flavors.

The twist? The Stoli Hotel is temporary and will exist in its Hollywood location only for a month. The traveling event will then move to cities like New York (where it's said to be hooking up with a big-name artist), Chicago, San Francisco and Miami.

While Americans have been snorting Stoli since the Cold War, says Adam Rosen, senior brand manager, in recent years it's been something of an image orphan, with five different ad campaigns in as many years.

Now, under new distribution from Pernod-Ricard, "the brand is still very well known and has plenty of history, but we needed to make it relevant," he says. "Sure, people identify it as the best Russian vodka, but this sophisticated customer base also knows there's a premium French vodka, and a premium Swedish one. We had to have an answer to the question, 'Russian vodka. So what?' "

So the company decided to focus on the aspect of the brand's history with the most impact: The hottest hotel bars in town, which Rosen calls "the cutting edge of cocktail culture, whether it's the Mondrian in L.A., the Delano in Miami, or the Gansevoort in New York." And it plays nicely off the Stoli label, which has always featured the image of the famed (and now defunct) Hotel Moska on Red Square.

"Even the word Stolichnaya means metropolis," he says. To make the connection clearer, the hotel's design draws from the history of opulence and baroque grandeur of the Russian czars. Once inside the 10,000-square-foot space, "guests won't feel like they're at an event," he says, "they'll feel like they are at well-designed hotel."

The idea, hatched by Legacy Marketing Partners, the brand's event-marketing agency, is simple: "We want to create buzz," says Rosen, who says 15 invitation-only events are planned for L.A., with hosts ranging from Hugh Hefner to celebrity DJs, as well as film premiere after-parties. To up the cultural cachet, Stoli is partnering with DIFFA: Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS, one of the largest HIV/AIDS charities.

Rosen says Pernod-Ricard will devote the brand's entire Internet ad budget, which he describes as "several million this fiscal year," on the Stoli Hotel effort. And on May 1 (get it, comrades?) the brand will launch stolihotel.com, which will provide viewers with a virtual tour of the hotel, its many amenities and a calendar of events.