They seemed like good ideas to someone!

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They seemed like good ideas to someone!

Unread postby bourbonv » Sat Sep 09, 2006 7:19 pm

There have been products in the bourbon industry that must have seemed like a good idea to someone at some time, but flopped in the market. My personal experience is with Rebel Yell Shooters.

It was the early 1990's and the United Distillers archive was just created and the marketing people were working on a new project. The big craze in the bars were shooter drinks. These highly flavored drinks were served in a test tube type shot glass and drank very quickly with a lot of alcohol burn and showing off how tough the drinker was. The cinamon schnaps shooter "Hot Damn" was leading the pack. The marketing people decided to create a bourbon based shooter. Sounded like a good idea, but what they came up with is Rebel Yell Shooters. It had some bourbon in this 101 proof product, but not much and what bourbon flavor there was in the product, was overpowered by the sweet/hot cinnamon flavor. Sure enough the shooter craze died down about the time it hit the market and the product died a quick death.

United Distillers is not the only distiller to jump on the band wagon only to find out it was actually a manure spreader. Brown-Forman thought they would create a "lite" whiskey when government regulations loosened up in the late 1970's allowing for product distilled at between 160 and 180 proof to be labeled "Light whiskey". This regulationreally helped the blended whiskey brands because they could use alcohol distilled to not quite neutral spirit level in their product and call it whiskey. Brown-Forman decided that this was nice but they could beat everyone to the market by taking existing whiskey and filter all of the color out of the product. This clear liquid would convince people it was lighter in flavor and calories, because after all, it was clear! Clear has to be lighter than brown, right. They marketed this product as Frost 8/80. It flopped so bad most of the product never left the shelves. Brown-Forman recalled the product and had it destroyed by turning it into fuel additive alcohol.

Jim Beam also came up with a product to jump on a band wagon. The microbreweries were catching on with their microbrewed beers. They thought they would create a "microdistilled" product. They tried to convince the public that if they took whiskey and consolidated the barrels, i.e. dump the whiskey and refill the barrels, eleminating a few on the way, this was "microdistilling" and worthy of a whole new category of product. They called the product "Jacob's Well" and the public just wasn't buying it - their story line or the product.

Of course Brown-Forman went a different route to try to cash in on the microbrewery craze - they created Jack Daniel's beer. They built a microbrewery at the distillery and even placed a bottling line in one of their buildings. The brand caught on for a while and demand out grew the production facilities, so they contracted it out to a large brewery. The public evidently did not like this new brew because the brand has pretty much disappeared as quick as it appeared.

I am sure there are many other products made in the history of this industry that flopped just as bad as these examples. It would be interesting to spend some time in the patent office just looking at applications from distilleries.
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Unread postby cowdery » Sat Sep 09, 2006 10:02 pm

My favorite. Brown-Forman's Frost 880 "clear whiskey."
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Unread postby EllenJ » Sat Sep 09, 2006 11:17 pm

Here's another example of a failed attempt to market light whiskey as a separate product, this one from National Distillers.

Those whose experience of Old Crow is only the wretched fluid currently found in its plastic bottles, can't understand just what a fine bourbon it once was. I'm afraid Crow Lite was not a very good example of that, though. If I were a person who did tasting notes, I'd have to say that, despite the anemic, straw-like color Crow Lite shares with blended scotch and cheap tequila, the nose is reminiscent of a fresh morning breeze bearing traces of economical whiskey poured last night and left unconsumed. The flavor itself is probably close to what Mike Hack would find if he aged Neutral Spirits for three years.

Jacob's Well, however, was not at all like that. It was an early favorite of mine and really not a bad bourbon at all. I corresponded with Aaron Brost of Fortune Brands about it for awhile, and he was very sympathetic and enthusiastic about trying to dig up answers, but not really very helpful. Much as I expect the Schenley folks will be for Mike Veach. The official answer is that Jacob's Well, which was only marketed from 1996 to 1998, was contemporary with the Small Batch brands, and that it just wasn't a hit with the consumers. Personally, I find it hard to accept that (1) the sales of Basil Hayden overwhelmed it, or that (2) any marketing director would pull a new brand after less than two years in a limited market.

I suspect the reasons for Jacob's Well's rapid retreat were more political. I doubt that it was a problem with the brand manager; that was Kathleen DiBenedetto, who is still at Beam. She is "working on portfolio-wide programming" now, but I don't know enough about Fortune's hierarchy to know if that's a promotion. I don't believe she has managed any other brands since JW. My inclination is that the brand fell victim to a corporate decision to sacrifice one of their five new brands. Obviously Booker and Baker weren't going to get the axe, and Knob Creek (clearly a better bourbon) was already showing signs of taking off. The only other candidate, Basil Hayden, was also (along with Booker's) a representative of the Boston distillery, which MIGHT have been enough to edge out Jacob's Well. Whatever the real cause, the decision was obviously independent of any serious study of "customer acceptance".
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Unread postby bourbonv » Sun Sep 10, 2006 10:02 am

John,
I think the problem with Jacob's Well was economic. They added an extra step to the process (consolidating the barrels) that really did nothing for the flavor - it simply added expense. It was not part of the "Small Batch" collection and was meant to create a new category of its own. When the consumers and the competition both laughed at the concept of "micro-distilling as defined by Beam, they pulled the brand and the concept. I believe its demise is as simple as that.

Chuck,
The Frost 8/80 was suppose to be the light whiskey that could be a substitute for Vodka. I do believe their biggest problem was that Vodka could be made and sold cheaper so nobody wanted to buy Frost 8/80. Clear, light whiskey to do shooters with you lite beer! What a concept!
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Unread postby cowdery » Tue Sep 12, 2006 12:56 am

As this article makes clear, Frost 8/80 wasn't technically "light whiskey." This is a fascinating article, from 1971. Note re our Michter's thread the mention of Publicker.

Credit where credit is due, this was uncovered by someone on the "other" site.
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Unread postby bourbonv » Tue Sep 12, 2006 9:34 am

Chuck,
Thanks for posting the article. That is the first written information I have had on the brand. My knowledge of the brand to this time was second hand information from people who worked at Brown-Forman such as Chris Morris. Most of these people started at Brown-Forman in the late 70's and their information was second hand as well. From the article it does seem Frost 8/80 was a light whiskey in that it was distilled at a higher than 160 proof, but it does not seem from the article to have been aged at all, even though the article does say something about filtering stipping color and flavor from the product. Color would have to be a product of aging. To be called whiskey, it has to be aged in wood and if under 4 years of age it has to have an age statement. I don't recall an age statement on Frost 8/80 so I assumed it was aged 4 years -probably in used barrels - and filtered to remove color and flavor. Maybe that is the process refered to in the article, but I am not sure. Actually after reading the article, I am not sure the writer completely understood what was happening with the brand.

Brown-Forman was hoping to go one step further than the brown vodka style of "light whiskey" and create a "white whiskey" category. I guess it seemed to be a good idea at the time...
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Unread postby EllenJ » Tue Sep 12, 2006 6:31 pm

Chuck,
That is a fascinating article; thanks for posting it.
In addition to the Crow Light (which might also not have been true "light whiskey") we have an example of Four Roses Premium. And I sure don't see that finding its way to anyone's Best Whiskey list, either. Although, to tell the truth, it isn't any worse than the Crow Light (which, at least, wasn't a blended whiskey).
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Unread postby cowdery » Tue Sep 12, 2006 8:47 pm

Because my background is in marketing, what amazes me about this whole story is that the concept wasn't market tested. I don't know that, but I can't help but think that if it had been market tested, they would have gotten the answer the market eventually gave them, which was no thank you very much.

Creating this product wasn't just a matter of designing a label and printing some sales brochures. This required major capital investment, in stills and other new equipment, and inventory, not to mention the lobbying expense of getting the law changed. The stills are still out there too. Barton has one, which to the best of my knowledge they never use. Buffalo Trace has one, which they use to make Rain Vodka. I'm sure there are others.

Many things doomed Light Whiskey but one factor, I believe, was the introduction in the exact same year, 1972, of Miller Lite. The first reduced-calorie "diet" beers had appeared in 1967 and were unsuccessful. Miller's product succeeded because of the name and the genius advertising that supported it, because while guys wouldn't buy a product with "diet" in the name, "lite" didn't seem to bother them.

Thanks to the Miller Lite marketing juggernaught, "lite" came to mean "reduced calorie," which light whiskey was not.

Another thing that amazes me is that the producers surveyed the market and saw their own blended whiskey on one side and vodka on the other and thought there was room for something in between. As light (i.e., flavorless) as the typical American blend is, it's hard to imagine what they had in mind with light.

When the product finally hit the market, it seemed to have nothing consumers wanted.
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Unread postby Brewer » Tue Sep 12, 2006 10:07 pm

Guys,

How long did this "product line" or "concept" last?

PS: I didn't get a chance to read the article yet, so forgive me if the answer is there.
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Unread postby bourbonv » Tue Sep 12, 2006 10:21 pm

Bob,
I don't have ant exact figures as to how long Frost 8/80 lasted on the market, but not long.

The concept of "light whiskey" is still with us today. I do believe a few of the blended whiskeys took advantage of the concept and changed to the "light whiskey" category by simply distilling their spirits to 189 proof instead of 190, thus they are no longer "blended whiskey" with nuetral spirits, but "light whiskey".
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Unread postby cowdery » Wed Sep 13, 2006 1:45 am

Mike,

If you can identify a product on the market today that uses the 'light whiskey' designation, I'd like to know what it is. I've never seen one. One reason I doubt it is that light whiskey has to be manufactured specifically to be light whiskey, whereas blends can be mixed up from spirits (straight whiskey, unaged whiskey and GNS) that are already made for other purposes.
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Unread postby bourbonv » Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:41 am

Chuck,
I am pretty sure that the Getz Museum has a bottle of the Barton light whiskey in their display of current products. I think Heaven Hill has a one as well.
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Unread postby angelshare » Wed Sep 13, 2006 1:18 pm

EllenJ wrote:Jacob's Well, however, was not at all like that. It was an early favorite of mine and really not a bad bourbon at all.


As an aside, we'll add our agreement. We liked Jacob's Well, even if the "micro-distilling" marketing thing was a bit laughable. But is it really any more laughable than some of the other marketing ploys that are used with other current products? To paraphrase Chuck from one of his excellent Bourbon Country Reader articles a while back, myth, marketing and historical fact seem to blend together so much in the American whiskey industry that no one on the consumer end can really tell the difference after a while. We've all but given up on doing it ourselves. We just sit back and let Chuck, Mike "Hall of Fame" Veach, the Vatman, "EllenJ" Lipman, Bunghole, et al do the research for us! :lol:

The bummer about Jacob's Well was that it was a decent product, while it sounds like light whiskey was just a concept looking for a market.
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