A decade pays off for WKD

WKD is celebrating its 10th anniversary with the news that the brand has hit top spot in the latest AC Nielsen results.

The figures for October and November 2005 show sales of WKD outstripping its closest rival Smirnoff Ice for the first time.

And while the Diageo brand is still number one year on year, there will be more long-term concerns with its half-year results, published last week, which showed volumes of Smirnoff Ice had fallen by 20 per cent in the last year.

It is now a decade since WKD launched into the UK market with its Iron Brew variant and in that time it has seen a number of rival brands come and go.

Karen Salters, marketing director at brand owner Beverage Brands, exclusively told The Publican that hitting the number one spot was a great feeling but insisted the company would not change its approach to marketing the brand.

"The moment you start acting like number one is the moment you start to lose what you are about. We have always been the underdog," she said.

"The easiest thing to do is start TV advertising and doing cut price deals because that's what the big boys do. And then you end up not doing the quirky things you did when you were a small brand.

"We will continue to do the kind of thing we did before. For example, we are not going to have any activity around the World Cup simply because that is what everyone else is going to do.

"We get great cut-through from things like our Pub Channel advertising - people see our products in the pub rather than at home during the middle of Coronation Street. For us, the attitude is almost, 'let's see what our competitors are doing and then let's not do it'."

She believes that the secret to WKD's long-term success has been thanks to innovation. "WKD Iron Brew was unique when it was first introduced - we had a USP," she said. "If we hadn't innovated with WKD Blue when we did (in 2001) the Iron Brew probably would not be around any more."