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The marketer who steered Coors Light’s “cold” ad messaging for years is now taking the same approach to vodka. Andy England—who was chief marketing officer at MillerCoors from 2008 to 2015—is now CEO at Phillips Distilling, a Minnesota-based spirits marketer that under his watch is about to flood the market with new innovations, packaging and campaigns. 

That includes a vodka brand called “Cubist” that is specially designed to be stored in the freezer—a ploy that plays off of the custom many vodka drinkers have of putting the booze in the icebox. Cubist packaging uses thermochromic technology that turns the bottle blue when its temperature drops to zero degrees Celsius or below. The brand, which will initially debut in Minnesota and Arizona in August, will use the tagline, “The World’s Most Refreshing Vodka.”

Sounds familiar? It should: Coors Light under England leaned into its classic tagline "the world's most refreshing beer," which was backed by packaging gimmicks such as cold-activated cans and bottles on which the mountains turn blue when the beer is cold. 

“Many people like to put vodka in the freezer,” England says on the latest edition of Ad Age’s Marketer’s Brief podcast. “But as far as we can tell … nobody’s ever created a vodka that is made for the freezer. It’s almost like vodka manufacturers or vodka marketers put up with the fact that consumers put it in the freezer.” 

Asked if he was afraid of Coors Light’s lawyers coming after him, he says in jest: “They are not claiming to be the world’s most refreshing vodka, as I recall, just the world’s most refreshing beer,” while recalling the fact that Coors back in the day actually modeled its claim on Grey Goose vodka claiming to be “the world’s best tasting vodka.” 

“Coors Light was very much inspired by Grey Goose with that tagline, and so the world’s come all the way back to vodka,” he says. (Coors Light of late has actually moved on to the tagline, “Made to Chill.”)

Phillips’ packaging gimmicks don’t stop with Cubist. It is dressing its UV Vodka brand in a new look that leans into the UV, or ultraviolet, reference, with bottles that will activate a bright spectrum of colors when exposed to UV sunlight.  The tagline is “Bring the Light.”

“The brand felt really tired, so there was an opportunity to contemporize it,” England says.

The moves come as Phillps tries to break through in the crowded and cluttered vodka category, which of late has been led by Tito’s. When it comes to the vodka liquid itself, there is not a ton of difference between individual brands. Up until 2020, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau officially defined vodka as “without distinctive character, aroma, taste, or color,” as England points out on the podcast.

He compares it to the light beer category, where Bud Light, Coors Light and Miller Lite are often criticized as all tasting the same. “I’ve worked in a space where you’ve got big brands, lots of consumption and small differences,” he says. “My view is small differences can make a difference and identity really matters.” So with UV, Phillips wants to craft an identity that “we can actually own and be unique in the space,” he says.

On the podcast, England also talks about how Phillips is rebranding its Revel Stoke flavored whiskey brand with an irreverent approach that targets what he calls “Zillennials”—men ages 21-34. New flavors include  “Nutcrusher Peanut Butter,” “Hotbox Cinnamon,” “SonofaPeach” and “Lei’d Roasted Pineapple.” 

The crude names veer from the direction of the beer industry, which has taken pains to do more gender-neutral marketing and distance itself from its beer babe past. “It’s not that we want to be exclusive of females, but I will say I think people worry too much [about] being inclusive with every brand,” England says.

He points to Phillips’ Prairie Organic Spirits brand, whose new campaign targets what it calls “Ecopolitans,” whom England describes as thirtysomething females who are “consumed with the environment.”

“I don’t sit around worrying about whether talking to Ecopolitans upsets 50-year-old men, I don’t care. And in the same way, if talking to Zillennials in a language that is meaningful to them is upsetting to 40-year-old women, I don’t care about that either.”

“George Steinbrenner wrote the book on this,” he adds, referencing the former New York Yankees owner. “His whole argument was you’ve got to appeal to your target audience and you need them to love you and if everybody else hates, you, I don’t care. And I think that is the exact right attitude to have.”