Friends of Fizz –

The finest beverage event of the year is about to occur – Tales of the Cocktail. For those of you who don’t know about this festival honoring booze let us share a secret with you, it is the finest beverage event of the season. Why do we say this? Let us offer some thoughts. 

It’s still relatively small so the great producers of fine spirits can still afford to attend. In the same day you will be able to see Lance Winters talk about artisanal spirits, Mike McCaw discourse on still design and go have a drink with Ted Breaux, the finest maker of absinthe on the planet today.

The big brands haven’t “Super Bowled” it yet. You know the term Super Bowling don’t you. It’s where all of the marketing noise surrounding an event overshadows the event itself. We have all been to beverage shows like that before and Tales just isn’t that. It’s for the passionate lover of cocktails by the passionate lover of cocktails.

It’s in New Orleans. Post-Katrina New Orleans is still one of the top three US cities in which to have a cocktail. Ancient bars, professional staff, desire for quality and the ability to walk everywhere. What could be finer?

The program this year is brilliant. There are going to be days that we won’t know which of three programs to attend because they are going to be so cool. Shall we go with Dale on a walking tour of NOLA as he takes us through the history of the cocktail OR shall we stay indoors and join in a conversation about organic spirits with Allen Katz OR shall we mosey out the door and join our favorite micro distiller at a local joint as they reveal their latest creations and we taste them over a lunch of crawfish and key lime pie? Many options, all are good.

Hope to see you all there. For those friends and clients who are coming to Tales your friends here at Fizz will be there Tuesday through Sunday. Come see us at the Hotel Monteleone.

For more info: http://www.talesofthecocktail.com/2008/index.php

Add Comment »

Great list, go view http://www.webbyawards.com/press/speeches.php .

Add Comment »

Greetings all. Fizz greatly enjoyed this year’s Beverage Forum. Many new tweaks from the good folks at BMC made this Forum the best one Fizz has ever attended.

What we were most struck by this year was how WOMM has become the mainstream driver for growth in the beverage industry. BMC reports that in just five short years Monster has almost caught Red Bull in volume sold in the US. Monster made it clear to attendees that their success is based on word of mouth marketing that is interesting to the consumer, relevant to their target and authentic to the Monster brand. Go Monster go!

Dogfish Head Brewing made similar comments but with an eastern flair in their presentation on the Tao of Marketing. It is the marriage of great beer and effective word of mouth marketing that the president of Dogfish Head said has taken them from the smallest commercial brewer in America (that 1400th out of 1400) to the 34th largest with $30,000,000 in annual sales. Mmmmmmm Dogfish! 

The other interesting point from the year’s Forum - those brands that spend their time talking about their great commercials and all of the “impressions” they get from banner ads are making headlines today either as an acquisition target or turning in poor sales results vs. their competitors.

 WOMM rules! Get on the bus or get bought by a smarter competitor. You have been warned.

Add Comment »

Hi Folks. Here’s the invite. See you all at WOMMA.

For more information on WOMMA-U go to www.womma.org

Add Comment »

Well Jim Arndorfer got some coverage in the WSJ. Damn your journalistic excellence, Jim! Just kidding. We consider Jim a friend of Fizz and some of us have even been sources for him when he was at AdAge.  We’re just jealous because we want engraved pix of us in the WSJ because we think that would be cool.

If you haven’t visited Jim’s blog it’s at http://www.brewblog.com/. To see the WSJ’s take on the matter, go to http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120829767153417401.html?mod=hps_us_at_glance_mm

We do have some questions for the blog gurus who visit this site:

·         How do you tell the difference between a PR organ and a “corporate blog”?

·         What does it mean to be a member of “the press” these days?

·         What is the value of a “corporate blog” to the company?

Looking forward to some interesting answers

Add Comment »

While we’ve loved the Harold and Kumar franchise ever since we heard the rumor that a couple of University of Chicago film nerds were writing a stoner movie, the best part of the first film was Neal Patrick Harris as an out of his gourd meth head. “Doogie” as a drug addled sex maniac. Brilliant!

With the new film, the writers acknowledged the “NPH” character’s cult status and ask the question, “What Would Neal Patrick Harris Do?” Please to enjoy www.whatwouldnphdo.com

Add Comment »

Is outside the box thinking going to pay off for Dr. Pepper? This just in from the Guns N Roses web site -

We’re in negotiations for the release of “Chinese Democracy” and things are going well.

When we begin to put tour plans together, we’ll see where things are. Until then, Robin’s touring with NIN and we’re working with management on our game plans.

Our thanks to those who continue to show their support.

Guns N’ Roses

Way to go DP!

(for more on why Fizz likes DP’s idea so much please see http://fizzcorp.com/blog/?p=23)

Add Comment »

Excellent articles and reporting from this year’s craft brewers conference in San Diego is available from Harry Schuhmacher and his crew at Beer Business Daily. Find them at http://www.beernet.com/. At this year’s conference, there was a great panel of craft brewers talking about differentiation and “beer buzz”. Later, Fizz was asked to comment and this is what we said -

In our realm, differentiation is critical because it can drive sales. However, differentiation can become silly* as entrepreneurs seek to enter a market but all existing positions seem to be taken.

I share with you the two tests that Fizz uses when working with clients on differentiation:

1) “WGAF” An acronym that stands for “Why should someone Give A Fuck?”. This test flows from Nietzsche’s famous comment that I paraphrase in the following way - once humans understand the “why” of something the “who”, “what”, “when”, “where” and “how” will fall into place. This test forces a supplier to articulate a compelling story as to why a consumer would exchange their precious resources for that brewer’s product.  

2) “Interesting, Relevant and Authentic”Differentiation is great but for the “different” story to be shared by one customer to another it has to meet the three criteria below. Fail on any of the three criteria and the beer won’t get talked about. Beer that is not talked about does not sell well.   

“Interesting” - The story has to be interesting to those Influencer beer consumers otherwise they will not pay attention.  

“Relevant” - The story has to be relevant to someones beer drinking life. Irrelevant = not talked about.  

“Authentic” - The story has to be immediately recognizable to the consumer as “authentic” to the beverage brand or category. Fail in this and a brand spends all of it’s time convincing consumers that what it is saying is “true” rather than spending it’s time sharing their brand story with as many people as possible.  

*We were working our gin client’s booth three years ago at WSWA. On our right, Ed McMahon’s vodka and on our left, vodka in a replica Kalashnikov bottle. When Ed and “that gun guy” are launching in a category you know it is going to be “silly” for sometime to come. The fruit beer craze of 2000-2001 would be another example.

We look forward to your comments.

1 Comment »

* http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=80854&Nid=41684&p=414196

Add Comment »

For those of you who haven’t read the whitepapers yet, Dave and the crew at BzzAgent have done some research, combined it with some exotic math and come up with a CPM of $300 for WOMM initiatives. Dave whips out his “Self” sock puppets and explains the whole thing in MediaPost this morning. Thanks Dave!

Here’s the link to the article http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=80526&Nid=41543&p=334800 , to Dave’s first white paper in the series http://www.bzzagent.com/downloads/BzzAgent_Paper_One_CPM_of_WOM.pdf and the second in the series http://www.bzzagent.com/downloads/BzzAgent_Paper_Two_WOM_in_Sales_Funnel.pdf.

And has far as that headline goes, taking Dave’s CPM data and mulitplying Fizz’s customers delivered per campaign gives Fizz an average campaign value of $4,000,000. Now where is that Aston Martin order form?

Add Comment »