SWEDE SENSATION

10 Jul 2014 By David Fuhrmann-Lim

Absolut Vodka’s first artist-collaborator was Andy Warhol, and since then it has enthralled us with its endlessly clever and cheeky ads. Decades on and it’s still one of the greatest campaigns ever. So what’s with the brand’s new strategy?

Absolut has boasted some of the most creative and successful campaigns ever. Now it’s shifting focus to live events and legendary parties.

By Rebecca Greedfield

In 2012, Absolut worked with the electric dance music trio Swedish House Mafia to create what would become an incredibly popular music video (Greyhound) that, over two years later, has racked up more than 41 million views on YouTube. Despite the numbers, though, the vodka giant doesn’t consider the campaign a branding slam dunk.

By some metrics, the Absolut Greyhound marketing effort worked. “It became an extremely exciting, vibrant, fun, premium, cool content,” Jonas Tåhlin, Absolut’s VP of Global Marketing told Fast Company. “It became a social media smash hit.”

To call it a failure would be too harsh, he added. “I would never say that,” he said. “I would say I don’t think we were particularly insightful around it. It’s just cool. It doesn’t tell you about the brand.”

Read the rest at Fast Company