The spirit of the South
Sundown, and it's like an invisible force-field has been thrown up around the Royal Sonesta. Beyond the swinging glass doors the crazies of Bourbon Street, their paper cups slopping over with hurricane cocktails, are whipping up a human storm in a wild non-stop orgy of fun.
While inside New Orleans' most famous hotel the air is calm, serene. Only Maurice, a beaming commissionaire stops the worlds of fire and ice colliding. If he had been in Dawn of the Dead it would have had a much nicer ending.
Among the current guests are Southern Comfort's UK sales and marketing team. They are here to plot their strategy for 2008, and if anything they'd like a little more Bourbon Street and a little less Royal Sonesta in the mix.
Owning FebruaryThis week sees the beginning of the Brown-Forman brand's global campaign to own February. A modest enough goal, perhaps - it is a short, miserable month in the UK - but if the team are successful February will become one long party.
When once Shrove Tuesday reached its pitch of excitement with the toss of a pancake, from now on Mardi Gras - as that day's known throughout most of the world - will inspire hundreds of Southern Comfort branded parties to liven up the on-trade in this dreary time of year.
Specifically it will be New Orleans Mardi Gras that SoCo - to adopt the suitably jazzed up abbreviation - is importing. The drink was, after all, invented in New Orleans when an Irish bartender called Martin Wilkes Heron added fruits and spices to improve the rough whiskey they had to stomach here in the 19th century. The historical link made, it was a simple step to the Mardi Gras theme, the beads, masks and feathers that the New Orleans Mardi Gras is famous for, and will be the party dress in pubs and bars this month.
Southern Comfort is no longer made in New Orleans, of course. But the intended provenance is more one of culture, of personality, than of production values.
In August 2005 Hurricane Katrina and the flooding that followed in its wake devastated 80 per cent of the city. More than 2,000 lives were lost and tens of thousands of people are still in exile, lacking the money, the heart and the federal government support to rebuild their homes.
Yet the spirit of New Orleans survives. The French Quarter, the oldest part with the Bourbon Street strip along its spine, came through Katrina relatively unscathed - they knew how to build levees in them days. And, more importantly, the New Orleaneans were never going to stop partying without a fight.
Katrina and her legacy are reflected on here with a bitter, belligerent humour. Buskers still fill the streets with jazz and blues day and night. Mardi Gras is back to a week-long festival, and even in October the effervescent Mardi Gras mood infects live music events like the Voodoo Fest, where Southern Comfort has a strong presence as a sponsor.
With New Orleans as its base spirit the brand is reaching out to a new, young audience in the US, driven by SoCo and lime shots.
In case you think it's all fun, on their trip the UK marketeers were forced at 11 in the morning to taste SoCo against competitive products - Malibu, Morgan's Spiced, José Cuervo tequila, Smirnoff vodka, Jim Beam bourbon and Jägermeister, all served warm and neat. SoCo was the unofficial winner.
"These drinks are all aiming for the same market, but SoCo is more complex and makes richer cocktails," argues global brand ambassador Phil Cusimano. "It can better bring out the flavour of fruit juices because fruit is already built into it. "We're not going to take on the whole vodka category, of course, but we can compete there and get some business. It's the same with tequila. we won't replace it but we can get in that margarita, and SoCo and lime in comparison to Jägermeister can be seen as more responsible because it's lower in strength. We can fight in all these categories."
The big push In the UK, the brand's second largest market, the big push will be around SoCo, lemonade and lime, served in pitchers in the party style."Sales were flat for many years in the US," explains Lois Ireson, SoCo's brand manager for the UK. "Then along came SoCo and lime."It's not something we pushed on consumers. They made it up themselves. And it's taken us off the porch - the brand was very laid back before."
She hopes the same trick can be performed this side of the Atlantic by promoting Southern Comfort in simple mixed drinks and getting it off its dusty spot on the back-bar.
"Cocktails can't be reproduced properly in the the local pub, and that's not good for the brand," she says. "We have to start to address its identity in the on-trade because that's where you change perceptions. "The competition is anything our target audience drinks - we want them to upgrade and call for a SoCo. We want to be seen as a young, adult spirit, and the fact that its ABV is slightly less that other spirits is in our favour at the moment."
SoCo's recipe - whiskey, fruit and spices blended into a neutral spirit - won't be part of the marketing message, but as Ireson points out "our competitive set don't talk about production either - and at least we have a birthplace."Because we're from New Orleans we have the chance to own Mardi Gras, and February can become our month. When we were a sleepy brand that didn't fit. But now it's about our cosmopolitan heritage, about getting out of your working clothes and having a good time."
