NYTimes Campaign Spotlight: Brown-Forman spending ‘significantly more’ to launch Southern Comfort Fiery Pepper

Marketing materials from the Southern Comfort Lime launch. (Click to enlarge.)

Did someone say, “You can’t buy that kind of advertising!”?

The New York Times has a long story today analyzing Brown-Forman’s new advertising campaign for Southern Comfort Fiery Pepper.

“In New Ads, Some (Drinkers) Like It Hot,” NYTimes reporter Stuart Elliot uses the new peppery hot Southern Comfort flavor – the distiller’s second in a year – to examine a flavor trend in spirits that started with “white goods” such as vodka and gin, and has moved into “brown goods” such as bourbon. (Just what Southern Comfort actually is – a whiskey? a liqueur? – has never been clear to me. Probably best we don’t know.)

The story also gives us a peek behind the curtain on how the Louisville-based liquor giant markets. And Brown-Forman is acknowledged as being among the greatest marketing engines in the world.

Elliot also puts some numbers on how much is at stake at Big Four ad firms such as Interpublic even with minor portfolio brands such as Southern Comfort, which probably has 10 percent of Jack Daniel’s case sales.

According to the story:

• The campaign is by Southern Comfort’s creative agency, Arnold Worldwide in Boston, part of the Paris, France-based Havas Worldwide unit of Havas.
• The promotional elements are being handled by the Marketing Store, part of the Havi Group, based in Chicago.
• The  media agency is Universal McCann, part of the Mediabrands division of the Interpublic Group of Companies.

The budget for the campaign is significantly more than what was spent last year to introduce Southern Comfort Lime, says Mark Bacon, managing director for Southern Comfort at the Brown-Forman Corporation in Louisville, Ky. “It’s the largest media buy for a single product in the history of the Southern Comfort franchise,” he adds. According to Kantar Media, part of WPP, Brown-Forman spent $2.6 million last year on ads for Southern Comfort Lime, out of a total for all varieties of Southern Comfort of $3.7 million.

But we would ask, how much is this story worth to Brown-Forman?

Think of that … what would it cost to buy a full-page ad to get to Gray Lady’s 900,000 daily print subscribers, not to mention its 1.8 million average daily visitors?

Our insider tip: Skip the liquor. Buy Brown-Forman stock.