New Year's Eve & Mobile Marketing with Svedka Vodka

As the new year approaches many of you will be making your traditional celebratory plans. Those of you who enjoy a good vodka martini may have a bottle of Svedka in your plans for New Year's Eve (I certainly do). For those who happen to purchase a bottle this week you may be exposed to Svedka's newest marketing campaign - a multichannel campaign including mobile, social media and outbound marketing.

The roots of Svedka's new campaign seem to reside with its Canadian distributor, Constellation Company's Vincor International. For us in the US, it appears the campaign is a little more gracile - missing the Canadian Twitter component. Nonetheless, it's still a cool campaign worth noting as an example of robust mobile brand marketing and engagement.

Q&A with Svedka's Canadian Distributor

Mobile Marketer's Dan Butcher interviewed Amanda Murphy, brand manager of spirits and refreshments at Vincor International, Toronto. Here's some noteworthy Q&A:

What is the target demographic of the TwittQR campaign?

"Our target consumer is the 25-44-year-old ‘socializer.' This group consumes about one-fourth of all vodka, much of which takes place in bars and restaurants, and more importantly this group drives image and spreads the word on what’s current and what’s hot."

How can adding mobile elements enhance a multichannel marketing campaign?

"Adding mobile elements to a multichannel campaign is essential in modern marketing.

The additional channels give consumers the opportunity to spontaneously engage with brands rather than receiving traditional one-way messages from advertisers.

Additionally, mobile social media elements allow consumers to spontaneously engage within their own social networks and to build communities around brands that they can identify with."

The US mobile marketing campaign looks like this:

The QR code resides on the Svedka bottle itself and can be easily scanned by any QR scanner app. It's not the standard black color either, but an eye catching pink with the text "Party like it's 2033" in the middle of it. After scanning you'll be redirected to an age verification page.

After verifying your age you'll be presented with a quick mobile video that leads to a "magic eight-ball" call to action. By tapping the magic eight-ball you'll learn "What's in your Svedka future."

Once you engage with the magic eight-ball cocktail predictor you'll be given a prediction for the night and a recipe. It's important to note that each recipe can be shared on Facebook, Twitter and email. Afterwards, you can engage the magic eight-ball again or browse all of the drink recipes.

From the creativity of the QR code itself to the social sharing capabilities of the recipes, the above is a great example of mobile brand marketing. Based on Svedka's stated goals of spontaneous brand engagement and social sharing, the mobile campaign contains all of the elements necessary for success.

That being said, there is still room for improvement. Without access to the mobile analytics it's hard to know for sure, but the social sharing buttons could be more action-oriented rather than static social media logos. Ultimately, they'd need to experiment to see if that simple change would increase sharing. For help with mobile websites, smart phone apps, SMS and QR code marketing watch our Mobile Marketing for Your Business video.

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