Executives who sell Absolut vodka are doing something they rarely do: expanding the roster of advertising, marketing and communications agencies they work with.
The Absolut Company, a division of Pernod Ricard, is adding Sid Lee, an agency based in Montreal that also has offices in cities like Amsterdam, New York and Toronto. The agency, which works for marketers like Adidas, Cirque du Soleil and Ubisoft, is being named to create the next worldwide campaign for Absolut, which is scheduled to begin appearing in summer 2013.
There was no review or pitch before Sid Lee was added, said Mathias Westphal, global brand director for Absolut, which is based in Stockholm. Absolut executives simply liked the work the agency had produced for clients like Cirque du Soleil.
The campaign is to include traditional advertising; digital advertising; so-called experiential marketing, which involves events and other ways to bring products to life in tangible forms; social media; and branded entertainment, meaning the production of content in which Absolut will be interwoven into the plots.
Absolut has for many years worked with two agencies that lead the global work on its campaigns. One, specializing in television, print and other mainstream forms of advertising, is TBWA Worldwide, part of the Omnicom Group, and its TBWA/Chiat/Day office in New York. The other is GreatWorks, based in Stockholm, which specializes in digital advertising.
It is TBWA/Chiat/Day and a predecessor, TBWA Advertising, that have created the well-known Absolut ads featuring the brand’s distinctive bottle, artists like Andy Warhol, flavored vodkas and novelties like snow globes and gloves. That relationship with Absolut dates back more than 30 years, through several owners and distributors of the brand.
Both TBWA and GreatWorks will continue to work on Absolut, Mr. Westphal said.
The reason that Absolut decided to “appoint Sid Lee as one of our lead agencies on a global level,” Mr. Westphal said in a phone interview on Thursday, was a rethinking of how Absolut needed to be advertised and marketed, particularly when it came to millennial consumers.
“There’s a bit of a shift in our marketing model, to doing from saying,” Mr. Westphal said — in other words, away from traditional ads that talk about the product to focusing on experiences that the product can offer consumers.
Sid Lee is “bringing a lot of fresh, new thinking to today’s millennial generation,” he added.
Another reason for reconsidering how Absolut is sold is what Mr. Westphal called the “fierce competition” in the premium segment of the vodka market that confronts Absolut.
Absolut was once almost alone in its field of imported vodkas that cost more than domestic brands like Smirnoff. Now it faces scores of rivals, both in its price range as well as from vodkas that are known as superpremiums, brands like Grey Goose and Ketel One that cost more than Absolut.
“As a brand, when we started out, we were challenging conventions,” Mr. Westphal said. “We need to do that now.”
Absolut is the fourth-largest spirits brand in the world, behind Bacardi, Smirnoff and Johnnie Walker, meaning it is still the biggest brand of imported vodka. In most countries in which it is sold, including the United States, it is also the best-selling premium or imported vodka.
At Sid Lee, the Absolut work will be primarily handled out of its Amsterdam office, with the New York office, a relatively new addition, and the Toronto office also taking part.
“It’s a big deal for us,” said Bertrand Cesvet, chairman of Sid Lee in Montreal.
And “it’s humbling,” he added, to join TBWA on the Absolut agency roster, because “there’s a great body of work and a great heritage.”
“Absolut has been one of the most consistent brands in history” in terms of its ad approaches, Mr. Cesvet said. “It’s a new era.”
Eric Alper, vice president for strategy and lead account partner for Absolut at Sid Lee, based in the Toronto office, said: “To reach, touch and engage millennials, advertising can’t be like wallpaper. You have to create advertising that can compete with pop culture.”
TBWA will continue to create campaigns for other brands sold by the Absolut Company and the Pernod Ricard parent, among them Jameson and Kahlua.
After the campaign for Absolut for 2013 begins to run, Mr. Westphal said, “where we go in the future is an open question.”
Asked if, going forward, each assignment from Absolut will be a so-called jump ball, with the roster agencies competing to be selected for the work, Mr. Westphal replied, “Right now, Sid Lee has caught that ball.”
In another sign of how competitive the vodka market is, another vodka brand said on Thursday that it was hiring an agency it had not worked with before.
Belvedere vodka, produced and distributed by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, selected BBDO Worldwide, also an Omnicom agency, to handle a project, creating its next global campaign. The ads are expected to begin running in spring 2013.
Belvedere had most recently worked with another Omnicom agency, the Arnell Group in New York, as its creative agency of record.