Avenue Vine: Canadian Club Goes Big With New US Ad Campagne

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November 01, 2007

Canadian Club Goes Big With New US Ad Campagne

Beam Global Spirits & Wine is making good on its pledge to get behind its Canadian Club Canadian whisky with an increased marketing effort, unveiling a new U.S. ad campaign for the brand titled “Damn right your dad drank it.” Featuring outdoor, radio and print spots in men’s interest magazines, the new campaign will launch in November. Its focus is repositioning the Canadian Club brand as a masculine spirit and linking it with the on-premise scene via the promotion of classic whisky cocktails.

“’Damn Right’ is positioned to expose the brand to a new consumer who appreciates the notion of timeless masculinity, most importantly a masculine, classic cocktail,” said Canadian Club brand director Dennis Prado.

Beam announced in May that it would infuse Canadian Club with a double-digit marketing spend increase, selecting Energy BBDO as the brand’s global agency of record the same month (Energy BBDO also handles Beam’s Jim Beam, Starbucks Coffee Liqueurs, Knob Creek Bourbon and Small Batch Bourbon Collection offerings).

“Canadian Club has a great deal of untapped potential,” said Rory Finlay, Beam’s svp, chief marketing officer, at the time. “It’s been a bit overlooked in the past, but we’re about to change that and give Canadian Club the attention and support it deserves.”

Canadian Club sells 2.1 million cases globally and about 1.3 million in the U.S., where it’s lost roughly 100,000 cases since 2000 and more than half a million since 1990, according to Impact Databank. That performance has essentially mirrored the U.S. market’s Canadian whisky category—with the key exception of Diageo’s Crown Royal, which continues to climb. With its new ad push, Canadian Club’s first in the U.S. in nearly 20 years, Beam is hoping to restore some of that volume by generating word-of-mouth—and a higher profile—among young, male LDA consumers.

Source: “Canadian Club Gets New US Ad Push,” Dan Marsteller, Wine Spectator, November 1, 2007