FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Fizz welcomes Judi Friedman to the team as our Chief Strategy Officer. One of the mostdynamic women in marketing today, Judi has worked with companies from HBO and IBM tostart- ups. As the former VP of One- to- One Marketing at Three and COO of All Points, she hasyears of experience in both digital and Word of Mouth marketing for global players in energy,high tech and consumer products.

Atlanta, Georgia May 10, 2011 – - Fizz welcomes Judi Friedman to the team as Chief StrategyOfficer. Judi is uniquely suited to the task of providing keen strategic insight in the rapidly growing discipline of Word of Mouth Marketing.

“Judi is one of the great marketing 1.0 stars that has fully embraced marketing 2.0 tactics yet brings all the discipline and strategic thinking to the new arena. Fizz could not be any more thrilled than the day she decidedto join the team,” says Ted Wright, Founder and CEO of Fizz.

With experience in both sales and marketing for both B2B and B2C companies, Friedman has developed an exceptional ability to develop actionable strategies that deliver business results. Starting with IBM, shelaunched the first artificial intelligence based sales qualification system, and then moved on to earn top salesawards.

After IBM, Judi started MarketOne, an agency focused on integrating sales and marketing by runningmeasurable campaigns. She then joined Three, an advertising agency, as V.P. of One- to- One Marketingresponsible for integrating innovative marketing tactics such as Word of Mouth and Mobile into clients’campaigns.# # #

It’s official.

It’s true. Atlanta gets bowled over by the snow. A measly ten plows to handle the 2011 ATL Snowpocalypse has left many a commuter in her PJs waiting for the mercury to rise. It’s not entirely Atlanta’s fault, we haven’t seen snow like this in over a decade so some are taking lemons and making ice skate rinks.

While the white stuff incapacitates our fair city, it’s a boon to others—take the Tahoe Snowcial. Last week Fizz sent one of our best and brightest, Vanessa J. to shred some powder at Snowcial 2011. Surrounded by serious ski fans and social media experts, Vanessa brought Fizz spirit to this electric conference!

Snowcial is an annual extravaganza combining skiing and social media for an unforgettable networking event on the mountain. New tech and location-based applications have energized the ski industry, bringing more vitality and camaraderie than the sport has seen in years. GoWalla’s Josh Williams discussed how the popularity of “checking in” is how new media users are opening up and more efficiently “telling the stories” of their lives. Vail Resorts CEO Rob Katz explained how Epic Mix allows skiers to passively check in at lifts by way of chips integrated into their ski passes. This enables users to earn points and rewards, as well as share their locations via Facebook and Twitter– all while tracking the day’s activities. Snowcial attendees got to try the tech first hand and Vanessa nearly cleared 18,000 vertical feet!

And for any attendees who thought this was just a white fluffy excuse to hit the slopes for a weekend, the keynote, Dr. Duncan Berry, Principal of Buyology Inc., gave an in-depth neurological discussion of brain processes as they relate to consumer behavior.

As we all know, no ski-social media tech and networking conference is complete without a special appearance from a hip hop icon. Snowcial 2011 did not disappoint. MC Hammer was there with bells on for both a rousing performance and to share how digital interaction has helped his philanthropic efforts.

Sitting by the window watching a Honda Civic try to climb an icy hill, I checked in to Foursquare for “Snowcation in Hothlanta” and got the Super Duper Swarm badge. Four-thousand others had done the same thing. I can’t help but realize that even when each of us is stranded by the snow, it’s clear that we all want to be a part of something larger. We want to share ideas, leave a digital mark of our experiences and connect these experiences with each other. This is what Snowcial 2011 is all about.

Learn more about Hugh: http://gapingvoid.com/about/

Client side CMO – Bev alch, leader in their category. Chairman of the company has asked us if we know any “incredibly capable, non conventional, disciplined but out of the box people we would recommend.” If you are reading this than you probably fit that description or know someone who does. Contact Ted Wright directly if you want to know more.

Fizz LA – Looking for two field people. Contract position. 12 month gigs.

Fizz Seattle – Looking for a field person. Contract position. 12 month gig.

Fizz various West Coast locations – Looking for up to four field people. Contract position. 12 month gig.

Fizz West Coast – WOMM hire. Employee. Regional field manager.

Fizz Atlanta – WOMM hire. Employee. Strategy and creative focus.

Fizz Atlanta – WOMM hire. Employee. Sales and client management focus.

Field people need to have between two and five years experience. Experience in beverage, tobacco, automotive, gaming and national tours all pluses.

WOMM applicants get extra points for previous WOMM experience, ability to quote from the WOMM cannon, existing client side contacts and biz dev skills.

As a company, we are impressed by smart and an ability to get things done. We have a very tight team that trusts each other.  We think we have some of the best jobs in American marketing today. We’ll get 2,000 resumes sent to jobs@fizzcorp.com after we post this and probably call 15 people back. If you’re one of those fifteen then thanks in advance for making our day.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Bob Garfield Joins Fizz as Consultant in Residence

Atlanta, Georgia – April 6, 2010 – Legendary marketing thought leader Bob Garfield, in his first strategic affiliation since launching his limited consulting practice, will serve as “Consultant in Residence” to Fizz as his exclusive partner in the Word of Mouth Marketing space.

Garfield, longtime Advertising Age columnist and author of And Now a Few Words from Me and The Chaos Scenario, will work with the Fizz team to strategize on behalf of clients and to vet ongoing work.

“I can’t tell you how delighted I am to have access to this guy’s brain,” said Fizz managing partner Ted Wright “He has been so far out ahead of the pack on the trajectory of marketing, and he has an uncanny knack for getting the beating heart of every problem, every issue. Conveniently enough, he also believes Word of Mouth is the beating heart of marketing going forward.”

Garfield’s collaboration with Fizz will be one of a small handful of affiliations forged by Bob Garfield LLC.

“I have no desire to live in 737s,” he said, “but I have a tremendous desire to finally put my core marketing principles to use – and to them test in the marketplace. It was so easy for me to hitch my wagon to Fizz. The team is fantastic and Ted Wright is way smarter than me. Seriously. Way smarter. It actually kind of annoys me.

“As for Word of Mouth,” he continued, “it has always been the most potent, and most persuasive medium. In the rubble of mass media, it is rapidly becoming the most important. Anybody who doesn’t incorporate it in their overall marketing efforts is either crazy or in deep, deep denial.”

Headquartered in Atlanta, Fizz is a global leader in word of mouth marketing. Its work on Pabst Blue Ribbon beer is one of the space’s most famous case histories, leading to a thriving practice in the beverage industry and beyond. Managing partner Ted Wright, an alumnus of Booz Allen & Hamilton, holds an MBA with honors from The University of Chicago.
Contact:

Ted Wright
ted@fizzcorp.com
2405 Charleston Oaks
Suite 100
Decatur, GA 30030
(404) 638-1066

Thank you to everyone who entered our contest for Best Un-Approvable Beer Name. While we received many excellent entries, we were only able to choose one winner. The Beer Industry Summit ticket was awarded to John Harris and the design team at Battalion Social Design! Here is their winning entry:Thanks again to everyone who entered!

You could win a ticket to the 2010 Beer Industry Summit worth $1100! Simply come up with the best beer name that would never get approved by the Alcohol Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) and you’ll be on your way to one of the largest beer events in the industry!

About the Conference

The conference gathers 500 professionals from the beer industry to the Wild Horse Pass Resort & Spa in Phoenix, AZ from February 28th to March 1st to talk about the biggest issues in beer. Join our own Ted Wright as he and a panel of industry veterans talk about how to use word-of-mouth marketing to generate crazy growth rates for your brands! Other major topics of discussion at the Summit include:

• Latino beer drinkers and how to reach them
• Distributor consolidation
• What’s driving craft beer growth…

And much more!

How to Enter

Come up with the best beer brand name that would never get approved by the TTB. Bonus points for sending a mockup label to go with your beer name or doing anything else that we think is funny. Email your entry to BeerSummitContest@fizzcorp.com by Thursday, February 4, 2010 at 11:59pm Eastern Standard Time (EST) with “Beer Summit Ticket” as the subject line. Yep, it’s that simple.Entries will be judged on the following criteria:

• Humor
• Cleverness in breaking rules
• Unapprovability
• General wit

Entries will be judged solely by the team at Fizz (herein known as “Fizz”). All entry decisions are final and at the sole discretion of Fizz. The winner will be contacted on February 5, 2010 via the email address the entry is submitted with.

Contest Rules (a.k.a. “The Fine Print”)

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. PURCHASE WILL NOT IMPROVE CHANCES OF WINNING.All winners must be 21 years of age or older, unless otherwise stated and/or posted.

1. Entering Contests and Choosing and Contacting Winners

Entrants must send entries using the correct contest entry email address, subject line, and any other specific entry information requested in the contest announcement. Fizz is not responsible for and will not consider incomplete or incorrect entries or emails sent but not received by Fizz for any reason, as potential contest winners.Only one entry per email address used to send the email will be considered for contest entry, unless multiple entries are specifically allowed in the contest posting. Unless otherwise specified in an individual contest post, no person may enter any contest more than once using multiple email addresses.Once a winner is selected and notified, failure to respond by the response date shall mean that the winner forfeits the prize. Fizz is not required to award elsewhere any prizes forfeited by the chosen winner(s).

2. Submission of photo, text or other content for Contests

Entries selected for display and to win “best of” contests and any other contests requiring photo, text or other content from the entrants will be judged entirely at the discretion of Fizz.By submitting any photo or information to Fizz, you hereby grant to Fizz and its affiliates, subsidiaries, licensees and assigns, an irrevocable, perpetual and royalty-free right to use, reproduce, edit, display, transmit, prepare derivative works of, modify, publish and otherwise make use of the submitted photo or other information in any and all media, whether now known or hereinafter created, throughout the world and for any purpose. The rights granted to Fizz include but are not limited to the right to resize, crop, censor, compress, edit, feature, caption, affix logos to, and to otherwise alter or make use of the submitted photo.By submitting any photo or information to Fizz, you hereby represent and warrant that the submitted photo or information does not and shall not infringe on any copyright, any rights of privacy or publicity of any person, or any other right of any third party, and you have the right to grant any and all rights and licenses granted to Fizz herein, including but not limited to all necessary rights under copyright, free and clear of any claims or encumbrances.You acknowledge and agree that Fizz shall have no obligation to post, display or otherwise make publicly available any photo or information submitted by you, and may, in its sole and unfettered discretion, remove, edit, modify or delete any photo or information that you submit to Fizz.You understand and intend that any photo or information submitted by you to Fizz may be available for viewing, rating, review and comment on by the public, and understand that comments or ratings with which you disagree or are unhappy about may be published or otherwise become associated with any photo or information you submit to Fizz. By submitting any photo or information to Fizz, you hereby waive any privacy expectations that you may have with respect to any such photo or information submitted by you to Fizz.You hereby agree to hold Fizz and its affiliates, subsidiaries, licensees sponsors and assigns harmless from and against, and hereby waive any right to pursue, any claims of any nature arising in connection with the inclusion in, publication via or display on any Fizz site, or any other use authorized under these Terms, of any photo or information submitted to Fizz by you.Photos or information submitted by you shall be the property of Fizz, and Fizz shall have no obligation to preserve, return or otherwise make available to you or others any photos or information so submitted.

3. Awarding Prizes

Winners are solely responsible for all taxes and/or fees that may be incurred.Winners may not request substitutions of prize winnings. All winners are solely responsible for any and all taxes and/or fees, and all such additional costs that may be incurred.Fizz, Fizz clients, and employees of Fizz or its clients may not be held liable for any warranty, costs, damage, injury, or any other claims incurred as a result of usage of any winners of a prize once possession has been taken of the product by winner. Fizz is not liable for any loss arising out of or in connection with or resulting from any contest promoted by Fizz.If the specified prize becomes unavailable due to unforeseen circumstances, Fizz may substitute a prize of like or equal value.Management, employees and families of Fizz are prohibited from winning any prizes awarded by Fizz.Fizz reserves the right to alter any rules of any contest at any time.

Director of Digital

You were blogging in college or high school. You think in 140 characters chunks. You can code if you have to. You have a passion for participating in digital communities as well as creating/ sharing multimedia. Where some merely dabble in social media, you are immersed in it, super-connected and show creativity in everything you do.   You’d like to work for a company that thinks meetings suck and sock puppets rock. You are hip enough to get a Monty Python elderberry reference and can talk intelligently about Nudge, Meatball Sundaes, David Weinberger’s latest thoughts and if it matters that Guy Kawasaki actually writes all of those Tweets or pays someone to do it for him. You know the future and you want to work somewhere that has clients that want to go there with you.

What You’ll Do: 

• Create and manage content for all web/social media channels
• Act on behalf of Fizz and Fizz clients within all channels of social media
• Make sure content has been proofed and approved before it’s posted
• Monitor social media channels and develop regular reports for clients
• Identify opportunities/threats in user generated content
• Participate in and mediate conversations taking place within social media
• Stay current on emerging new technologies

Skills & Qualifications You Should Have:

• A passion and understanding of the entire social media universe.
• Excellent writing and communication skills
• Familiarity with best brands in social media
• Ability to juggle multiple projects in a fast paced environment
• Attention to detail
• Ability to work within tight deadlines
• Basic knowledge of photoshop, iMovie, iPhone and iCarley. 
• Basic html skills
• Audio/video skills a plus
• BA or BS in something that is relevant or cool
• Creativity
• Sense of humor
• Enjoy working for a great company

HOW TO APPLY 

Send resume and cover letter to womjob@yahoo.com if you think you’ve got what we are looking for. We are hiring now.

Some folks at Deutsche Bank say that premiumization in the liquor business is dead. What’s next, finance tips from someone’s Creative Director?  All joking aside we don’t see the era of anything being over. In tough times the stupid and ridiculous get weeded out. Ed McMahon’s premium vodka and silly flavored rums are probably not a good bet now but then they never were in the first place. There was just so much froth in the market that they could get launched and would live a little while before dying. 

 WHICH SELLS MORE? THE ONE THAT CONSUMERS TALK ABOUT.

    vs.   

The long term data shows that quality sells – Tito’s, VeeV, Hirsch bourbon, Bluecoat gin -  and BS smells.  People buy brands that are worth talking about. Right now people are talking about value so brands that over deliver on the category promise are growing. Those that don’t, won’t. A quick look through the recent IRI  data analysis provided below by WSD proves the point that brands with stories passed on by word of mouth are growing.  Those that don’t are not.

VODKA.  Smirnoff, Absolut and Skyy together represent about 30% volume share of the category and for most part are holding steady in the four weeks to June 14.  In terms of volume, Smirnoff grew 0.1%, Absolut grew 2.5% and Skyy grew 2.7%.  Interestingly, Absolut showed much improvement from its 52-week numbers (with volumes down -8%), while Skyy was much stronger in the 52-weeks (up 17.1%).  In recent years Grey Goose was a force to be reckoned with.  However, volumes in the four weeks declined -5.2% and -5.9% in the 52-weeks.
 
RUM.  Bacardi, Captain Morgan and Malibu all took hits in the four week period, with Bacardi declining the most, down -7.5%.  Captain Morgan fell -4% and Malibu Rum declined -1.1%.
 
WHISKEY.  Despite the assumption that Bourbon is doing especially well in the recession, Jack Daniel’s declined -8.1% in the four weeks, while Jim Beam fell -10.8% and Maker’s Mark was down -6.2%.  It’s notable, though, that Maker’s Mark performed much stronger during the 52-weeks (+4.5%), while Jack gained 0.1%.  Jim Beam, however, declined -7.4% in the year period.
 
Canadian Whiskey’s darlings in the U.S., Crown Royal and Black Velvet, also had a rough 4-weeks, with both declining -4.5% in volume.
 
Johnnie Walker Blended Scotch showed volume increases of 5.7% in the four weeks but only 0.7% in the 52-weeks.  Dewar’s declined -5.1% in the month but grew 9.1% in the year.  And finally, Clan Macgregor Blended Scotch grew 1.2% in the four weeks and 3.9% in the year.
 
Jameson Irish Whisky continues to grow amid the recession, with volumes in the four weeks up 21%, slowing from the 52-week results (30.7%).
 
TEQUILA.  Mega-brand Jose Cuervo declined -3.3% in the four weeks but gained 3.1% in volume in the 52-weeks.  Sauza, meanwhile, declined -0.2% in the four weeks and -0.6% in the 52 weeks.  Lastly, Patron grew above and beyond the latter two, up 11.3% in the four weeks and 14.1% in the 52-weeks.
 
GIN.  The top three representatives from the gin category declined in the four weeks but we’re not too surprised given that gin has had problems mounting a resurgence in recent years.  Tanqueray was down -6.6% in the month, followed by Seagrams (-0.6%) and Bombay Gin (-13.9%).