Smirnoff is crowned the fastest move
Smirnoff has stolen a march on its rivals to claim the title of the fastest-growing on-trade product of the year. The stalwart brand gained the most new listings in pubs in the spirits and ready-to-drink categories.
These were the findings of exclusive Morning Advertiser research, produced by CGA-Centro, into the brands making the biggest waves across 66,909 pubs.
Smirnoff Red topped the spirits category, driving distribution from 40,498 pubs in 2003 to 44,616 this year an additional 4,118 listings.
Sister RTD brand Smirnoff Ice grew from 50,082 outlets to 55,285 during the same period, gaining 5,204 extra listings.
Ashley Cairns, account director at CGA-Centro said: "Diageo has done a powerful job selling the Smirnoff brand. Looking at the data across the four categories the simple conclusion is that Smirnoff is the overallwinner."
Cairns attributed Smirnoff's success to the amount of advertising support Diageo invests behind the brand, which this year totalled £4.9m. And the company's recent attempts to give Smirnoff a new twist with the launch of flavoured variant Norsk, have already won the praise of buyers.
Indicating that the line extension could be one of next year's high fliers, Clare Vintner, director of drinks for the Spirit Group, said: "We have been trialling Smirnoff Norsk and it's going really well."
Elsewhere in the rankings of this year's fastest-moving brands, Corona took pole position in the premium packaged lager segment, gaining 2,450 listings on 2,448 in 2003 giving it a total presence in 4,898 pubs this year.
In the draught arena, distribution gains for John Smith's Extra Smooth put it ahead of its lager and cider competitors as it entered 2,049 new outlets taking total listings to 21,250 pubs.
