Daniel Hernandez Cote Global Marketing

Absolut Vodka (Executive Summary)

Who has not heard about Absolut Vodka or seen some of the most iconic advertisements? Absolut
Vodka had one of the greatest advertisings and the greatest marketing campaign of all times. They
were not just making advertisements, they were making people do the advertisements and this
made them appropriate the product and loyal customers. Absolut vodka was and is a great company
that break through the barrier of nations and made the world its market. The next presentation will
provide information about this company, focusing on the global marketing strategies.

This presentation is divided in different segments to make clear their marketing approach. The
segments in the presentation are; background of the company, description of market and customer
needs, analysis of strategy, new business model, analytical instrument, reasons and drivers for
success and conclusions.

The presentation begins with historical background of the company, and this is important to see
how the inclusion of the product into the market was. We see that Absolut Vodka is a Swedish
company that first used a new way of distillation of the product, decided to put it in their iconic
bottle and decided to go abroad to the United States and that’s when history happened, when their
first add was published and followed by more than a thousand images of the product, making it
part of the culture by letting people express their ideas. After this campaign that covered about
three decades, they had been successful with other campaigns, but they are always loyal to their
old image and their quality that has always put the product in the spot light.

After knowing the historical background of the company and having a better understanding of the
context, the presentation shows the description of the market and their customers. First, Absolut
Vodka is a beverage that has alcohol, so the most outside market is the alcohol market, including
their competitors that produce wine, beer and spirits. Then if we segment more the market we have
that Absolut has a lot of competitors in the spirits market, brands that produce whisky and rum,
and finally we have a more segmented market of the people that buy vodka, because these people
could choose of buying cheap, standard, premium or super premium vodka. Locating Absolut in
the premium vodka market, the customers seek for luxury, versatility in cocktails, sophistication
and class. Stating the above Absolut has a lot of competition and must know their market very well
in other to sell the product well.
Daniel Hernandez Cote Global Marketing

As it was described above Absolut Vodka must know their target market very well, so they know
what publicity and how to modify their product in other to reach their whole market. To know
which market is the most appropriate we must look and analysis the market. The presentation
shows the segmentation, and the targeting of the product. For the segmentation the use of graphs,
statistics and hard data was used to know the geographical, the demographic, the behavior and the
physiographic segmentation. In each of these segmentation it was highlighted the tendencies
groups of people that buy the product, and by looking at the what the hard data says the conclusion
was that the target market of Absolut Vodka are the: people that buy at urbanities and convenience
stores, are educated, have high income (+35000 USD), they can either be female or male, their age
is between 18-34 years old, they are innovators, they are loyal and they are open minded.

After the exact characteristics of our market are known, know the company must find the bests
ways to reach their market, this called positioning. The presentation shows that Absolut has diverse
way to reach their market. They reach their market by innovating constantly their image in the
bottle and creating new flavors. When they change the image on the bottle they reach a specific
market and make them embrace the product, as an example of the bottle presentation, Absolut
place images of cities in their bottles, so the people in those cities appropriate the product. Finally,
for their positioning they make use of a marketing strategy called “Absolut transform today”, this
new campaign wants to make advertising by making their target market feel and live the Absolut
experience.

The presentation shows that the new business model is an innovative way of changing how things
were done, but staying true to their image, bran, quality and flavor. Absolut vodka is rather not
trying to position themselves in one way, but they use the world and their markets as testing
ground, they want to try new business models, and to innovate as technology evolves. As a part of
this new business model Absolut Vodka in collaboration with some persons decided to build
distilleries in some iconic cities around the world. Absolut provided the recipe and all their
methods, so the products have great quality, but the distilleries are owned by people form the place
and all the ingredients for the preparation for the product are local. Another example of the
business model is the elaboration of Absolut Elix, a super-premium vodka crafted with copper
equipment, this super premium vodka by Absolut finally competes with the super-premium brands
like Grey Goose and Belverde.
Daniel Hernandez Cote Global Marketing

After this the presentation shows a challenge of Absolut Vodka, and it was the inclusion of the
product in China. They looked at China as a potential market because they are a fast-growing
market and they need someone to fill the gap. They fulfilled the gap by doing what they do best
and incorporating themselves into the culture and testing the new campaign of “transform
tomorrow” and make their target market in China feel the Absolut experience.

Almost concluding the presentation shows an analytical instrument, this time the SWOT analysis,
to show up the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the company. And then stating
some of the facts why Absolut Vodka is a company that is successful nowadays. The main reasons
of this is because they ensure the quality of the product by making it in just one place, investing
great part in adds, incorporating their product into the culture, embracing transformation and
innovating constantly.

As a conclusion the presentation states that a successful company must know their market very
well, they must connect with people and how they really use the product, they must experiment
endlessly and innovate, and change as the time changes or let the change happen to your company.
Daniel Hernandez Cote Global Marketing

References

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Daniel Hernandez Cote Global Marketing

• The Economist . (13 de June de 2017). Around the world, beer consumption is falling. Retrieved from
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