3. How can Vadim make the Absolut comeback distinctive? What should be the focus of the brand's engagement with the creative fields? What should be the key principles of Vadim's cultural strategy? 4. How can Vadim breathe new life into the Absolut bottle campaign? Would resurrecting the old campaign appeal to nostalgia? If he chooses to start a new campaign, how should he go about it? 5. How should Vadim manage and deploy his new cultural strategy throughout the Absolut organization?
IN1446 Building an Aspirational High-End Brand through Cultural Engagement: Absolut Vodka's Love Affair with Art 03/2018-6375 This case was written by David Dubois, Associate Professor of Marketing, Frdric Godart, Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Brian Henry, Research Fellow, all at INSEAD, and Vadim Grigorian (INSEAD MBA '00J). It is intended to be used as a basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation. Additional material about INSEAD case studies (e.g., videos, spreadsheets, links) can be accessed at cases.insead.edu. Copyright 2018 INSEAD COPIES MAY NOT BE MADE WITHOUT PERMISSION. NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE COPIED, STORED, TRANSMITTED, REPRODUCED OR DISTRIBUTED IN ANY FORM OR MEDIUM WHATSOEVER WITHOUT THE PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNER. This document is authorized for use only in Prof. Aandakuttan B Unnithan's Consumer Behavior.. at ${institution} from May 2018 to Nov 2018. Introduction January 2018: Vadim Grigorian was sipping verbena tea at Caf de Flore in Paris. He had recently launched himself as a cultural strategist and creativity consultant, following a corporate career that included 13 years at Pernod-Ricard, where from 2003 he went through a series of management positions before leaving the spirits company in 2016. In his experience as a global director of creativity and luxury, he had gained a deep insight into brands as cultural agents and the role of art in brand making. He was convinced that this was essential to sustain brands' success in the digital age. Over that period, interest in the creative arts and museums had steadily risen. In 2015, 57.5 million people visited 10 of the top museums in the United States, up 2.6% from 53.5 million in 2014. 1 The Van Gogh Museum (VGM) in Amsterdam had 2.26 million visitors in 2017, up from 2.1 million the year before, making it the most visited museum in the Netherlands. Its online fan base had grown exponentially: it had more than 4.4 million followers on Facebook, 1.4 million fans on Twitter, and its Instagram account had doubled to more than 500,000. \"The museum,\" its website announced, \"positions itself alongside the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa), the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Saatchi Gallery, in the international top-five of museums on social media.\" 2 The site also hosted a special collection of French prints that were rarely put on display because of their sensitivity to light. In Paris, the Muse du Louvre had teamed up with researchers at MIT to analyze visitor patterns using Bluetooth technology. 3 Meanwhile, Google had various innovative projects to make art more accessible to consumers, from mass-digitalization of art pieces to virtual visits of museums or exhibitions. In the digital age, a cultural engagement strategy was clearly a powerful differentiator to separate market leaders from the pack. But what exactly did designing and implementing a cultural-engagement strategy entail? Original Positioning Since arriving on the North American market in 1979, after 100 years of solitude on the Swedish market, Absolut had developed a 'brand personality' characterized by radical creativity and connections to communities in the art, fashion and music world. But its first challenge was to transcend traditional market perceptions: How could a vodka from Sweden compete against established Russian imports when vodka was so strongly identified with Russia, where it accounted for 90% of the spirits market. 4 In the United States, Absolut was introduced as a high-end product, relying on creativity and art to stand out from its Russian peers. Its unique brand identity relied on associations with the 1 2 3 4 Global Attractions Attendance Report, TEA Themed Entertainment Association, 2015 Museum Index, p. 73, http://www.teaconnect.org/images/files/TEA_160_611852_160525.pdf, accessed 28 February 2018 https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/enews-and-press/press-releases/van-gogh-museum-welcomes-recordnumber-of-visitors-and-becomes-most-visited-museum-in-the-netherlands, accessed 28 February 2018 https://knowledge.insead.edu/blog/insead-blog/the-digital-transformation-of-museums-6851, accessed 25 January 2018 ArArAt Brandy: Transforming a Legend into a Modern Icon, by Amitava Chattopadhyay and Vadim Grigorian, INSEAD Case Study 08/2014-5660, p. 2 This document is authorized for use only in Prof. Aandakuttan B Unnithan's Consumer Behavior.. at ${institution} from May 2018 to Nov 2018. Copyright INSEAD 1 creative art world; the name was spelled without a final 'e' to add a new twist; the bottle did not have a printed label (unusual at the time); the emphasis was on its Swedish roots and healthy ingredients. Absolut was positioned as a premium vodka, priced 50% higher than existing products. In the United States, the world's largest premium spirits market, Absolut was first distributed in Boston and then in New York. The US distributor, Carillon Importers Ltd., was managed by an outgoing, open-minded French entrepreneur, Michel Roux, who was key to the way Absolut embraced cutting-edge creativity and culture. The Absolut Bottle Campaign It was very clear that the colorless, odorless, tasteless spirit coming from the wrong country, with a wrong name, in a wrong bottle, would survive only through ingenious marketing and communication strategies, using its apparent weaknesses as strengths. (Vadim Grigorian) The success of Absolut stemmed in part from its celebrated \"bottle campaign\
