Absolut Vodka and advertising

The roots of vodka
The history of vodka in Sweden dates back to 400 years ago in the early sixteenth century when people began to distill grain alcohol for medicinal purposes and also to make gunpowder for cannons and rifles used by the Swedes in their frequent conflicts with neighboring countries. However, human nature will quickly find more recreational use to "bränvin"-meaning burnt wine, "and then in the seventeenth century, was made home, even in the humblest cottage, acquiring the status of a national drink, but of very uneven quality because of its homemade.

Lars Olsson Smith, the King of Vodka
Entrepreneur at age 14, the Swede Lars Olsson Smith already controlled one third of the domestic market of vodka when he was a teenager. He became known as the "King of Vodka", appeal it held for nearly half a century. In 1869 he built the country's largest distillery in Reimersholme, an island which now forms part of the city of Stockholm, and began producing a new type of vodka with a refined and pure flavor with a revolutionary method of a process to distill spirits from wheat, called rectification ... method is still used today.
The story of the Absolut Vodka advertising campaign was born in the late 1970s when the brand presents the challenge of conquering the American market, consumer 60% of global vodka market. Competing against less expensive brands of domestic production for local consumption -99%, and the exotic Russian Stolichnaya - which dominated the imported-Absolut enters the U.S. market in 1981 with a pack inspired by a Swedish medicine bottle of the last century, a label transparent and a name that eludes understanding. With such a range of elements seemingly against him, the media campaign had to be very special. The relationship with TBWA started on the eve of the launch of Absolut in Boston, USA when his then U.S. distributor, Carillon Importers, won the attention of all advertising of alcohol products to the agency.
Faced with limited knowledge of Swedish culture and identity, the TBWA team had to establish the concept that Absolut vodka was the best verbatim without affirming. They did it with Absolut Perfection, combining excellence with humor in such a simple concept like infinity which would mark the next 15 years of creativity.
Geoff Hayes, art director of the agency, discovered the concept while watching television at home one night, idly doodling in his notebook ... bottles above a drew a halo, like an angel and wrote down: "Absolut. The perfect vodka. " The next day, his colleague Graham Turner, suggested to be left, quite simply, as "Absolut Perfection" ...
This was the basis of the formula of two words that somehow praising the product or the person taking it. Also it was the touch of humor that remained arrogance implicit declaration of superiority.
The first attempts to photograph the bottle failed utterly, with results showing a flat, white object without grace or beauty. Finally, the creative team came up with a then unknown photographer, Steve Bronstein, who was able to resolve the problem of how to photograph an object whose main attraction lay in its clarity and transparency. Instead of using a black background, placed a plastic sheet behind semi-transparent bottle, lit by a dim light that left the bottle three-round and clear in the photo.

Series and variants that maintain the freshness of the brand
Using these same criteria of quality and imagination, the TBWA team developed other variants such as:
Absolut Cities: subtly transforming a known feature of a city in a notice to remind the bottle, it appears as the arches of the famous Brooklyn Bridge in the notice of the same name or the shape of Central Park in Manhattan Absolut. Later in 1993, appeared Absolut Eurocities series under the same concept, a flock of pigeons clustered on the bottle shape in the Piazza San Marco in Absolut Venice, one piece of the Wall in Absolut, and entry into the Tivoli Gardens in Absolut Copenhagen, among others.

Absolut Art: Absolut has worked with leading artists from around the world to produce works inspired by the bottle as Keith Haring and George Rodrigue.

Absolut Holidays: Christmas of 1987, the TBWA’s creative team was invited to the prestigious New York magazine to propose ideas for a special announcement. During that year, they had surpassed the Stolichnaya brand in sales, and expected an explosive consumption boom for the holidays.

Absolut Fashion: David Cameron was the first fashion designer who was inspired by the clarity and unity of design of the bottle. In 1987 he opened a silver mini dress simple but attractive lines that was modeled by Rachel Williams and photographed by Steve Bronstein.
Absolut Film & Literature: In 1994, they launched a series of three ads - Wells Absolut, Absolut and Absolut Shelley Stoker, paying homage to the three great writers HG Wells (The Invisible Man), Mary Shelley (Frankenstein) and Bram Stoker ( Dracula).