Lost Spirit
Vodka’s identity crisis
<<<BACK TO LIQUIDzine
From disco drink to humble and earthy, vodka has struggled to find a place in the current drinks landscape. Should it be loud, kitsch, brightly coloured and fun? Or should it be humble, salt of the earth, characterful, and crafted? Maybe, there’s another path….
Drinks trends tend to skip a generation. Whatever your parents drank, well, that’s not cool is it? And so it was that vodka, darling of the 90s, has been out of limelight for some time. Which, like gin, liqueurs, sherry and others before it, surely means that it’s due a comeback.
But what should it come back as? That’s not a trick question. As a transparent liquid often praised for its lack of flavour or neutrality, it’s more uniquely placed than other categories to be a blank canvas. What image then, what identity does vodka need to chime with consumers now?
Ripe for renewal
Of course, we’re not the only ones that have noticed the category is ripe for renewed interest. And it’s interesting to see that many of the brands either entering the category or ramping up activity over the past few years have gone the youthful/ party drink route.
Think AU Vodka with its gold and now photochromic bottles, brightly coloured liquids, and flavours that range from Blue, Cake, to Mango Glow, all of which sound entirely natural. Or there’s Ciroc with its continuous launch of new, trending flavours. Its placement at elite nightclubs across the globe, mean that it’s become a firm favourite for that unique phenomenon known as ‘bottle service’.
Get your camera phones ready; order a bottle and watch glamourous ladies with a lit-up branded pedestal and a sparkler or two carry a bottle to your table and charge you x100 the retail price for the pleasure of having both a seat and all eyes on you. It seems like a throwback to the Nuts/ ‘lads mags’ era of the noughties, and yet this is what aspirational looks like to a certain consumer set. And who are we to judge.
Flashy vs humble
And at the other end of the spectrum, there’s brands working hard to be humble. That either means plugging into eco issues, such as Warner’s brand new Trash & Treasure line which includes a vodka made from lemon peel discarded from a fruit processor. Or Finnish brand Koskenkorva, which is made using regeneratively-farmed barley and intends to be the world’s most sustainable vodka.
Others have tapped into terroir; think Belvedere and its Single Estate range, or Ramsbury and its Single Estate Vodka where every bottle can be traced back to a single field. Their brand stories are often accompanied by photos of farmers or ploughed fields. Or there’s brands tapping into a sense of local or national pride, often paired with a deep emphasis on their product’s handmade nature, and a shoutout to their core ingredient. Look no further than the mighty Tito’s Handmade Vodka, proudly hailing from Texas for all these product cues.
Time to mix it up
But there must be another way. Vodka cannot take off, and have its much tipped renaissance by rehashing the same play. Its long absence from being a trending spirit means it has a blank page, and a unique opportunity to forge an entirely new path.
So identity-wise, what should a new British vodka be? Forget patriotism. As Brits, we’re not massive fans of tapping into a sense of national pride, the way Tito’s has. We’re a bit more irreverent, a bit more disrespectful of things that hold themselves as lofty or important. So could a brand that wants to be the British vodka, the British Tito’s, tap into this mood itself?
And a brand could be the best made, most sustainable, most charitable brand in these great isles. And consumers want those things. But in the great white noise of corporate virtue signalling, consumers have become a little deaf to these claims. Time to deliver that same message in a disruptive way? What’s for sure, is that there’s more authentically modern ways to express crafted Britishness than muddy hunter wellies.
Against the grain
When it comes to the liquid, is neutrality still the goal? We’d argue not. It’s hard to give people a reason to pay a premium to sample your brand if the liquid doesn’t have anything that stands out about it. The rapid expansion of the gin category taught us that NPD could be hooked on unique botanicals, or those that dial up a certain mood alone (think Bombay Sapphire Sunset inspired by the glow of the setting sun), otherwise the staggering rate of new product launches would never have happened. Vodka however, has very much stayed in its lane. Highlighting genuinely innovative raw materials or production methods is a must.
Stand-out liquid stories, a fresh way of talking to consumers and new visual identity, and a disruptive brand voice that ditches the dance between laboriously crafted or nightclub-centric is needed if new brands are to shake up the category and truly deliver something new. Anything else is white noise.