BRAND DEVELOPMENT: Country Club Vodka

Double Diamond Design, a Nashville design boutique contracted our services in acquiring their first ever advertising account. Lipman Brothers Distributors sought a new marketing and awareness campaign for Country Club Vodka, a regionally recognized and affordable spirit with slumping sales. Our role included the development of the re-imaging strategy, plus the development and direction of the creative pitch.

Three previous Country Club campaigns linked the product directly to premiere national brands, an arguably unsound strategy for two reasons: 1) Informal focus groups showed Country Club was pricing itself away from its strongest prospects -- middle to low income, blue collar consumers -- who believed high style meant high cost; 2) the campaigns did little to affect the purchasing habits of premium brand loyalists.

Whereas the brand previously used billboard advertising as its sole messaging vehicle, our proposal called for a full integration of five marketing tactics: 1) billboards to speak to image-conscious consumers; 2) direct mail campaigns to garner critical consumer information; 3) contests and displays to increase exposure at points of purchase; 4) taste test campaigns to proactively get product in consumers? hands; and 5) and event sponsorships that agree with relationship-based Southern business and put a face to the brand.

As for results, Double Diamond Design is implementing 100% of the proposal while the incumbent agency of several years awaits the next account review.