You can't help feeling that we're all just that little bit more
American than we were a decade ago. We watch more in the way of
run-of-the-mill US telly these days and Florida was (at least until
recently) as accessible a holiday destination as the Greek isles. All
this, of course, means that the US isn't as exotic as it once was - and
images of Americana don't resonate in quite the same way as they
did.
Look at Levi's, for instance. It used to pitch its stall on Route 66 -
now its twisted road movie could be set just about anywhere, even, if
you use a bit of imagination, the M56. So perhaps we shouldn't be too
surprised to see a strong heritage brand such as Southern Comfort
ditching yet more of its American baggage over the rail of the paddle
steamer.
A new poster campaign - the first work from WCRS, which won the account
in August - is targeted at men in their early 20s. It sports a "Find you
own comfort zone" strapline and features people attempting to do just
that in a distinctly British urban landscape.
Some observers say this latest move isn't at all surprising - the brand
has been flirting with this sort of strategic switch for years. Its last
high-profile UK presence, for instance, was as the broadcast sponsor of
Big Brother, where the southernness was at one step removed. The break
bumpers featured a soap opera based on the antics of a group of British
flatmates, with one of them pretending to be a Delta Blues-loving
Colonel Saunders manque. And before that there was a 1999 television
campaign by D'Arcy, which was heralded as a big break at the time. True,
it succeeded in doing away with much of the folksy southern
paraphernalia - however, it was still shot in New Orleans.
But is the latest move wise? Isn't Confederate charm an essential
ingredient of the brand? Sophia Angelis, the UK marketing director of
Southern Comfort's owner, Brown-Forman, says that the brand's heritage
isn't actually going completely. It will be kept alive in public
relations activity next year, which will centre on a Cajun student poker
championship.
And she says that the problem isn't over-familiarity with the US. Quite
the reverse. She states: "The core of the brand's essence remains New
Orleans but New Orleans doesn't mean quite the same thing to a UK
audience. In the US, New Orleans is known as a party city, an outrageous
place where the rules don't apply. We're finding new ways to communicate
that to the UK consumer."
Some, though, believe that great care is needed here. Alex Batchelor,
the managing director of Interbrand, says that in the whisky market, you
have to be especially careful that you don't alienate your brand's core,
established drinker. "Marketing is a wonderful thing and it's important
to find your right target audience but sometimes you have to be careful
that the target audience doesn't find the marketing too naked a
process," he says. "What if it turns out that what they like about a
product is the fact that it wasn't very marketed, that it did look a bit
old-fashioned and it had all that southern American heritage?"
We're about to find out, clearly, but Julian Hough, the account director
at WCRS, is quietly confident. The goal, he says, is actually to reclaim
the brand's place in the repertoire of men in their early 20s.
"The campaign seeks to make Southern Comfort people's first spirit," he
says. "Something like malt whisky tends to be a nightcap but Southern
Comfort is more of a drink for people who have a couple of beers and
want to move on to something else. In 'Find your own comfort zone' we
think we've found a motivating idea."
