The Gulfstream took off from Stockholm’s Arlanda airport with a full load of executives, all of whom had the satisfaction of knowing that the global distribution rights to Absolut were signed, sealed and delivered.

If you’ve ever flown on a corporate jet, you know how great it is. You board quickly and easily, take off on time (or even ahead of time) and generally are met on the tarmac a few steps from the plane and off you go.

Despite this great convenience, I’ve heard people complain about the absence of frequent flier miles, which always makes me laugh at the silliness of the thought. For me, however, this particular flight had one disadvantage — it was full of Seagram brass. Every one of the 14 seats was taken and there was no place to hide. And, every one of the 14 had 5 or 6 ideas about marketing and how best to grow the brand further. After all, we were taking over the brand from the legendary Michel Roux who grew the brand with a series of innovative and effective marketing actions.

While getting the brand elated us, we were also mindful of the daunting task ahead. Especially the marketing guy…me.

This was best summed up by the owner who, after laying out his thoughts and vision, said, “Arturo, I have four words for you — don’t f**k it up.”

Michel Roux was indeed a hard act to follow. Carillon Importers was part of a large corporation, but he ran the brand entrepreneurially, with vision and resources to take this fledgling brand to renowned marketing levels.

There is a great story about Michel’s brand champion efforts that I recently asked him to confirm. I wasn’t sure if it was true or a booze business myth.

It seems he was in the Detroit airport waiting to depart when he noticed a man wearing an Absolut t-shirt. Alarm bells went off in his head for two reasons. First, there were no Absolut t-shirts and he and didn’t want them, so clearly it was counterfeit. Second and most important, the man in question (according to Michel) must have weighed over 350 pounds and despite the triple XL size, it was a very snug fit.

Clearly bothered by his brand portrayed in such a manner, Roux stopped the man, told him he was looking for that particular t-shirt and offered him $100 to buy it. The man accepted the generous offer. They went to a souvenir store, bought a replacement and now Michel owned it.

The man left happy with this transaction and the Absolut t-shirt was promptly tossed in the trash.

True story.

In my opinion, the Absolut brand has gone through 4 periods in its development. The first era was with M. Roux and Carillon Importers. Next came the Seagram years and further, albeit different, growth. The third period was one in which the brand began to languish despite the efforts of some (but not all) capable people. Today, the ownership of the brand is in the hands of Pernod Ricard with the difficult task of once again polishing its luster.

I plan to cover the Absolut story from these vantage points in the future.

Borrowed credentials is a term I like to use when a brand “borrows” something or someone to identify with, such as a brand name or a person as the endorser.

The intent is the “approval” or “license” to give a brand some prominence. But, more often than not, it doesn’t seem to work.

Three categories will help you to see where I’m going:

1. A brand that has licensed the name from another business or category. Godiva, for example.
2. A brand closely identified with a star or celebrity. Such as, Ciroc.
3. (My favorite) A brand named after a star or celebrity.

So here we go…

Licensed Brand Name

The two that come most readily to mind are Godiva and Starbuck’s, both in the liqueur category. I gotta tell you that I thought Godiva would be a crack-of-the-bat homerun. And, I wanted to license Starbuck’s so badly, I could taste it. Alas, neither has set the world on fire.

Association with a star or celebrity

This is a mixed bag best characterized by the nursery rhyme… “There once was a girl with a curl in the middle of her forehead. When she was good she was very, very good but when she was bad she was horrid.”

So in the “good” category we have (not necessarily in order of goodness):

• Ciroc and P Diddy (forgive me if I have the wrong name; who can keep up?). Probably the gold standard in celebrity links.
• Crystal Head Vodka and Dan Aykroyd — talk about chutzpah.
• Cabo and Sammy Hagar — (notice I didn’t say Cabo Wabo) good for you Skyy, it’s about the product not the star.
• Red Stag and Kid Rock — the brand is a homerun with or without him. But he sure does help.
• Margaritaville and Jimmy Buffett — remind me to tell how this came about. But even without Seagram and me, it’s doing well. But, Land Shark beer is doing even better.

The “not so good” entries I’ve come up with so far (let me know about any I’ve missed) include some that faded faster than a cold beer on a hot day:

• 901 Tequila and Justin Timberlake — run that by me again? I got it but I don’t get it.
• Sobieski Vodka and Bruce Willis — it’s the price point, dummy. It ain’t about you. Even if you’re still involved.
• Godfather Vodka — You got to be joking.
• Conjure Cognac — by Ludacris. I totally agree but ludicrous is spelled wrong.
• Armadale Vodka — by Jay Z.  Why don’t you ask P Diddy how it’s done?
• 3 Vodka — by Jermaine Dupri. Enough said.
• Mansinthe — by Marilyn Manson. I didn’t make this up, folks.

Named after a star or celebrity

My favorites by far. Do I hear a drum roll?

So far I covered the good and the bad. Here comes the ugly:

• Trump Vodka. He doesn’t even drink for heaven’s sake. Could be a pilot for Celebrity Booze.
• Willie Nelson’s Old Whiskey River Bourbon. Enough said.
• Danny Devito’s Limoncello. Close but no cigars.
• Jefferson and Sam Houston Bourbon. Not kidding; Google it.
• Frida Kahlo Tequila. I love her and her work but… who dun it?

And the winner is…

• McMahon Vodka. Would have worked with a name like, “Here’s… Johnny.”

Lessons learned:

None of the top selling brands have borrowed credentials…unless you count Captain Morgan.

I would like to meet the people behind some of these efforts, there’s a bridge they might be interested in buying.

Where would the spirits industry be without brands to pour off?

What’s next…the Lindsey Lohan Liqueur?

The last posting about Seagram and vodka neglected to point out that while there were difficulties in the category (pre Absolut) the company had phenomenal growth with Seagram’s Gin, Crown Royal and Captain Morgan.

In fact, Captain Morgan is a case study — in spirits and other businesses — about how to develop, nurture and grow a brand when all oars in the water are pulling in the same direction. I’ll go into this in more detail another time.

For now, let’s look at some numbers.

Currently, Captain Morgan Original Spiced Rum plus Parrott Bay sells over 6 million cases in the US. But, for the first time in its history, the brand had a down year in 2009. This is probably due, in part, to the economy but also a function of the growth of Rum brands like Sailor Jerry and Admiral Nelson — both brands grew by double digits from ’08 to ’09.

Further, from the birth of the brand until the close of Seagram, Captain Morgan had a Compound Annual Growth Rate of over 16%. For the past 8 or 9 years the CAGR was less than half of that.

Could be due to a number of things…a new generation of drinkers with new Rum tastes and interests, a changing competitive climate, the inevitability of brand life cycles, portfolio focus elsewhere, all of the above and other reasons.

For those who worked on the brand back in the day, I’d bet that among the most vivid recollections is hitting the million cases mark. It took well over ten years for the brand to hit that number in 1995. But it took much less time to hit two million cases.

In fact, between the planning for a million cases celebration and the event itself, the brand doubled its volume.

That, my friends, is called momentum.

Until the “acquisition” of Absolut, Seagram was not just a vodka-less company; it was an Ostrich hiding its head in whiskey pretending not to see the world of booze change.

Sam Bronfman’s aversion/reluctance to sell vodka is widely known. Perhaps for him, liquor needed to be aged or brown or have the word whiskey on the bottle. Whatever his reasons, the company was never a vodka player. In fact, when I was in market research, one of the older executives told me the story of how Mr. Sam reacted to a research project about changing consumer alcohol tastes. It may be apocryphal but it sure has the ring of truth.

One of the most notable researchers of the 50s and 60s, Alfred Politz, was an early leader in the techniques of polling and opinion analysis. He was commissioned to do a study of changing consumer alcohol tastes and attitudes. The presentation of the findings took place at an executive retreat and, in an unusual display of bonhomie, Mr. Sam suggested they review the results while sitting around the pool.

Page after page of the report pointed to the potential rise of vodka at the expense of whiskies. Politz was said to have been very clear that the evidence overwhelmingly leaned in this direction. It was also clear that Mr. Sam was getting angrier and angrier. Finally, he got up from his chaise, grabbed the report out of the researcher’s hands, threw it in the pool, muttered some obscenity and stormed off. Politz was said to have been relieved not to join his report.

So while competitors were developing Smirnoff, Popov, Stolichnaya and other brands, Seagram was struggling with entries like Wolfschmidt, Nikolai and Crown Russe.

Finally, someone decided to create a new vodka brand but, unlike most of those on the market at the time, it was to be imported vodka. In fact it was called Seagram Imported Vodka or SIV, as it was lovingly referred to. Imported all the way from Canada.

Management at the time knew that the “white goods” race was passing Seagram by and the pressure to succeed was very strong. So much so that when a presentation to a major California chain was set up to expand distribution, the “brass” decided to attend.

Picture this, a president, an owner, the head of marketing, the head of sales, brand managers…all fly off in the company plane to attend this meeting on SIV. They get to LA early with time to kill before the meeting. Since a few of them had never seen the inside of a chain store liquor department, they decide to visit a few stores.

Next thing you know there are 4 or 5 suits walking the aisles checking the shelves and watching consumers make decisions and purchases. They’re paying particular attention to the vodka section and spot a man looking at the brands and seemingly trying to make a decision.  A member of the entourage goes up to him, takes a bottle of SIV off the shelf, hands it to the man and says, “check this one…it’s imported.”

The man studies the bottle for a moment or two looks at the exec and, as he puts it back on the shelf says, “that’s not imported, it’s Seagram.

It took years to get the owners of Godiva Chocolatier to license the brand for a chocolate liqueur. It took a lot less time to learn that building the brand would not be easy.

Despite the absence of a meaningful liqueur in the portfolio, distribution was slow and since liqueurs are not a fast moving category, the turnover rate was even slower.

There’s a great story of a Seagram executive who goes to a Chinese restaurant on Long Island and, while he and his family are waiting for a table, he spots a bottle of Godiva on the back bar. This is the last type of restaurant he would expect to find the product and figures that the distributor sales rep that sold the account must be at the top of his game. What could he have said about the brand that got this small neighborhood restaurant to order it?

He goes up to the owner and says, “What did the salesman tell you to get you to take in the Godiva?” The owner, looked a bit puzzled at first, then smiled and said in a thick Cantonese accent, “Oh, he say two free vodkas if I buy the Godiva.”

After much research and thought, we came to the conclusion that despite the power of the brand name, there was a discontinuity between the expectation of the chocolate taste and the delivery of the product. When you say chocolate to people, they think, chewy, sweet and unique mouth feel. This is hard to deliver in a liquid product without ending up gloppy. So for many, the expectation was chocolate but the product delivered a Kahlua-like consistency.

We had to move out of the chocolate-only world and get closer to cream liqueurs. Two line extensions were introduced, a cappuccino/chocolate and a white chocolate, both cream products.

These strategic line extensions had a number of benefits. First, the facings went from 2 to 6 and the billboard effect on the shelf got the brand noticed and bought. Second, despite the adages not to line extend from weakness, the new forms actually benefitted the base brand (original), which started to grow. A brand that was languishing in the 10,000 cases range grew to nearly 50,000. After Diageo got it, it grew to over 100,000 cases.

I noticed that the brand dropped back to 50,000 in 2009. I also noticed that Campbell sold Godiva Chocolatier to a Turkish company called Yildiz. But I don’t know whether Diageo still has the license and distributes it. Anyone know the status of the brand?

One thing I can tell you is that if you see a bottle of Godiva on the back bar of any Chinese restaurant on Long Island, I bet it’s been there since 1995.

Sort of raises the question about spirits brands and what I like to call ‘borrowed credentials’ – also known as licensed or endorsed brands. Stay tuned…

Maurice Kanbar is among a select group of entrepreneurs who have changed the spirits industry. And, he’s still at it.

Like my earlier posting about David van de Velde, Maurice is another visionary businessman who has spent a lifetime on finding a hole and filling it. Maurice has been inventing, designing and developing a host of products ranging from films and how we watch them, to surgical instruments, to things, that when we see them, we say “now why didn’t I think of that?” The man has thirty patents and products to his credit.

I first met him in the early days of Skyy Spirits when I was sent on a fool’s errand to see if he would be willing to chat about an acquisition. This was in the late 1990s and the brand was just starting its ascendency. We were feeling the effects of its growth and one of the geniuses in Sweden thought we might be able to “buy him out.” After just a few minutes of chatting, he asked the key question – why sell while the brand is still growing. Duh. Sure got my respect.

But what I really admire about him is his judgment and intuition balanced by the tenacity of an inventive mind.

Examples:

He complains to a doctor friend that he gets headaches and a hangover from Cognac. His friend explains about congeners and tells him to drink vodka. The next thing that happens, he studies the world of spirits, makes advancements to the distillation and filtering systems and creates Skyy Vodka.

At the time, no one in the food or beverage business used blue for packaging – don’t ask me why…I once got my butt chewed for presenting a new product in blue packaging. Maurice didn’t let this narrow, stay in the box thinking confine him. I don’t know for sure, but I suppose he was thinking Skyy = blue. Another duh.

When his brand starts growing, he’s smart enough to surround himself with people who know the business like Foglio and Ruvo.

So he’s an interesting guy, to say the least.

His newest effort is Blue Angel Vodka, which he says is based on further advancements in distillation that produces an ultra smooth product. But the really cool part about it, in my opinion, is that the inventor has further increased his marketing skills. First, his signature drink is the Blue Angel Martini (BAM as he calls it) made with blue curacao. Also, I like his tongue-in-cheek slogan – “the world’s second best vodka; we’re still looking for the best.”

On second thought maybe he should stick to inventing.

At a recent visit to a Mets game (sorry I can’t bring myself to call it anything other than Shea Stadium) I was reminded of a story about baseball tickets.

Like many companies that entertain customers and clients, Seagram had a designated employee that handled customer/trade events and trips, national sales incentive programs and – the big prize – season tickets to sporting events in the NYC area.

One of these individuals, who I will call Mr. Keeper, was a nice and friendly guy until the subject of tickets came up. He didn’t see himself merely as the guardian or custodian of the coveted seats. Oh no, he was the protector, the de facto owner. Requests for tickets to a game were more often than not subjected to interrogation as to the identity of the intended customer and the rationale behind the request. And, invariably, unless the requestor was of significant ‘rank’ the request was denied outright or “someone else already got them.”

The management of the US operation passed to a new team and Mr. Keeper got an assignment outside of the US operation but still based in NYC.

The team that took over had its own designated employee to handle the customer relations, events and incentive trips. But when the first need for ballgame tickets arose, Mr. Keeper informed the new designate that the seats will be staying with Mr. Keeper and will be doled out as he saw fit.

Needless to say the new team was incensed and a (gentle) management skirmish erupted. But, with bigger issues to be addressed, the matter was set aside — not forgotten, just temporarily tabled.

One day, a senior executive asked for and grudgingly received tickets to a top notch Mets game.

While he knew the general vicinity on the field level where the seats were located, he wasn’t sure as to the exact location. He stopped an usher at the top of the section and handed the tickets to him. The usher looked at the tickets, looked at the executive, then back at the tickets, then at the executive again.

“Anything wrong?” asked the executive.

“Oh no,” said the usher. “I’m just surprised that you’re sitting in Mr. Keeper’s seats.”

For all I know he still has those seats.