Pernod Ricard has decided to drop the
flavored expressions from its Absolut Vodka line. This was a very surprising move in the
category that thrives on flavored expressions.
“We have reviewed price and we have a new campaign with the objective to
speak more about the product quality of the brand – something we didn’t speak
enough about in the past, which our competitors made sure they did”. “We have increased media spend behind the
brand, we have reduced flavors because there were too many flavors, making more
space for more disruptive innovations. “We are on-track to deliver our mid-term
objective in the growing vodka category, so I think we are doing the right
thing with the brand.”
Many producers in the rum industry have
been spending more on the production and marketing of their premium expressions
rather than continuing to develop more of the low cost high volume flavored
industrial rum expressions. This is an
attempt to make the customers aware of the taste of fine quality spirits rather
than continuing to imbibe sugared and flavored low quality “Kilroy” type
expressions.
There are many spirit categories going
down the “rabbit hole” with sugared and flavored spirits these days, but maybe
this is the first step in getting back to the basics of the spirits and efforts
toward quality and flavor through aging and blending rather than doctoring with
artificial stuff. We are losing out
taste for “GMO” foods and I hope that we are losing our taste for artificial
spirits as well.
I
want to see this continue to expand in the rum world. I’m not blind to the need for the flavored
industrial rums, but there is a need to market them in a way that makes it
clear what you are buying. Without
these high volume expressions, the
majority of the industry would not survive, but we need to be aware of what we
are buying. For me I'm all about the quality expressions, but for the "beginner" sweetness is what they are looking for in whatever spirit they are going to imbibe, so there is a market for them as well.