• by Ken Liebeskind , May 22, 2002

For hard liquor advertisers, the Internet is a whole new way of marketing.
Log on to Playboy.com and before you can get inside the site, you’re likely to see a full-screen Flash ad featuring Playboy founder Hugh Hefner talking about the “finer things in life” — his famous mansion, limousine, private plane, about a dozen beautiful women, and, of course, Jack Daniel’s.

For hard liquor advertisers, who have been booted from network television recently, it is the Internet that’s proving to be one of the finer things in life.

They are rushing to advertise on the Web in greater numbers, and while online hard liquor ad spending is still dwarfed by the money the industry spends on magazine ads (nearly $288 million last year), there is significant growth to report — CMR says distillers spent $3.1 million online last year, up from $2.1 million in 2000. Dollars are shifting away from magazines and toward the Internet. The leader of the pack is Brown-Forman, maker of Jack Daniel’s and Southern Comfort, which premiered the mega Hefner ad on Playboy last July, giving countless advertising professionals the chance to use the “I’m here for business reasons” excuse. Unfortunately for those with cookie-accepting browsers, the 15-second brand-building ad (no action was prompted other than simply viewing the ad and taking in its message) had a frequency cap of one play per visitor. Nevertheless, according to Jack Daniel’s brand director Erin Schlader, the ad was initially seen by 5 million people and replayed by 1 million more.

Schlader says Brown-Forman has used a number of other sites besides Playboy, including CBSSportsline, Maxim.com, Pogo.com, Icast.com, Uproar.com, Neoplanet.com, and Shockwave.com. Owen Hanney, president of Brown-Forman’s online agency, Slingshot, says the sites were used to play a number of other innovative rich media units, including floating banners and rich media skyscrapers. The ads serve a dual purpose — building the brand and promoting special events (a key element of online liquor advertising), such as a tailgate football event and 20 other professional sports events.

Another major online hard liquor advertiser is Absolut, which has created a series of online creative executions that integrate seamlessly with the legendary print campaign. Unlike Brown-Forman’s hard-hitting approach, Absolut’s ads are much more subtle, burying the two-word payoff from the print campaign deep in the creative. In Absolut Mirage, a faint image of an Absolut bottle appears, growing bolder before the payoff appears. Not exactly Hugh Hefner pontificating, but it makes its point.

“We invite the user to play with the ad — interaction is crucial to deliver the payoff,” says Makael Marticki, interactive media planner at TBWA/Chiat/Day, Absolut’s agency. “Traditional online ads are all about clicking and going to the site to buy,” Marticki says. “Our object is not to click. We’re exporting the brand equity into the ad.”

The agency is using Unicast Superstitials and IMUs for the campaign, which started last May. The sites it has used include Playboy.com, Lycos, Yahoo, TheOnion, Foodandwine.com, Maxim.com, Real.com, E!Online, CBSMarketwatch, and Vindigo.

The choice of sites is key for hard liquor advertisers because of the need to keep liquor advertising away from young viewers. “We carefully select sites based on demographic breakdown, type of content and viewing context,” Marticki says.

Meanwhile, many sites won’t accept hard liquor advertising because of the general prohibitive climate. Jupiter Media Metrix ranks NFL.com as the leading site for alcohol advertising, yet it runs no ads for hard liquor, only beer and wine. “The NFL doesn’t accept any liquor, sex, or gambling ads,” says Mark Mariani, president of sales and marketing at CBSSportsline, NFL.com’s parent. Since hard liquor is grouped with porn and gambling, it’s easy to see why publishers hesitate. Only sites that reach the proper demographic — adults with liberal attitudes about liquor — can be used. Playboy.com is ideal, because it attracts 21-to-49-year-old males, “the prime area for the demographic,” Schlader says. Playboy launched the mega ad format for Jack Daniel’s, crossed it over to Brown-Forman’s Southern Comfort, and now plans to use it for other clients, including Bacardi Silver, a rum-based malt beverage. Other hard liquor advertisers at Playboy.com include Brown-Forman’s Finlandia Vodka, Bacardi’s Dewars, and Seagram’s Captain Morgan Rum, Chivas Regal and Crown Royal.

Charles Buchwalter, vice president of media research at JMM, says the number of liquor ad impressions is up 270% for the first two months of this year compared with last year. “There’s been very significant growth,” he says. “There was a huge peak in December, which you’d expect with the holidays. It was down after December, but it’s still up from ’01.”

Jeff Kimmel, Playboy’s vice president of sales, lauds online advertising for hard liquor advertisers. “It provides liquor companies with a way to do TV commercials,” he says. “They can play TV ads online to millions of people at a relatively inexpensive CPM, which they’re not able to do any other way. It’s a whole new way of marketing.”