Svedka intends to reduce its variety of flavors and call atttention to its flagship vodka as part of a brand repositioning.
Seeking to recapture the growth it once enjoyed in a futuristic advertising universe, Svedka is undergoing a rebranding campaign with DCX Growth Accelerator, an agency with links to the vodka brand’s past glory.
The refresh is meant to reintroduce Svedka to customers already familiar with the brand. DCX won the 12-month assignment after a pitch in March, and its creative work is expected to launch in February.
Svedka most recently worked with Cashmere. A spokesperson for Svedka owner Constellation Brands confirmed the agency switch but declined further comment.
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The refresh would appear to accompany Constellation’s ongoing work to reposition Svedka. According to executives speaking at Constellation’s Investor Day event last November, work was already underway to shift the brand from mainstream to an “affordable luxury” positioning, while reducing the number of flavor extensions and emphasizing its 80-proof flagship. Svedka also plans a new line of ready-to-drink martinis.
“We believe Svedka needs to be returned to its original roots as a higher-end, accessible luxury vodka. We’re going to be doing that,” Robert Hanson, then the president of Constellation’s wine and sports division, said at the event (Hanson retired earlier this year).
Svedka has been struggling for several years. Today it’s the fourth-largest vodka brand in the U.S., behind Tito’s, Smirnoff and New Amsterdam, respectively. Svedka was down by 5% last year and has averaged an annual decline of 3.6% over the past five years, according to case volume data from Impact Databank, which is run by liquor trade publication Shanken. Dan Marsteller, executive editor of Shaken News Daily, attributes Svedka’s struggles to the runaway success of Tito’s, as well as the growth of ready-to-drink vodka cocktails like High Noon, which together have left little space for traditional vodka brands to grow.
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“Svedka has been a drag on Constellation’s wine and spirits portfolio (along with [wine brand] Woodbridge) for some time now,” Sarah Barrett, executive editor of Wine & Spirits Daily, said in an email. Citing Nielsen scan data, Barrett said the vodka category experienced low single-digit declines in the first half of this year, with even Tito’s slipping into negative territory.
DCX is led by former employees of Amalgamated, the agency that 20 years ago developed Svedka’s provocative “#1 vodka of 2033” platform. That introduced the world to “femme-bot,” the curvaceous and campy robot that became a sensation before going into retirement in 2013. Doug Cameron, chief strategy and creative officer at DCX Growth Accelerator, was then chief strategy officer at Amalgamated, and Tommy Noonan, DCX’s executive creative director, is also a former Amalgamated creative. Their campaign, which debuted in 2005, propelled Svedka from a virtual unknown to the third-largest U.S. vodka brand. (Amalgamated was later renamed Silver & Partners, which later closed.)
Svedka’s comeback plan seemingly does not include the femme-bot, which drew attention but was also polarizing. Cameron emphasized that DCX is on board not to recreate old campaigns, but to get Svedka back on a trajectory that would recapture its one-time status as the fastest-growing U.S. vodka brand. He declined to comment on the details of the new advertising, citing the lengthy time to launch.
The alcoholic beverage market is “extremely responsive,” to brand image advertising, Cameron said, but the industry hasn’t seen much of that lately. “The category has gotten a little soft in recent years in terms of brands breaking through and being talked about and being perceived as a leader,” he said. “And we see it as an opportunity to leapfrog the other brands.”
Femme-bot accompanied hyper-ironic slogans that played on present-day anxieties.
Svedka, founded by Guillaume Cuvelier, was looking for a way to stand out among other young spirits brands when it went to Amalgamated in 2003. The ad concept imagined Svedka as the No. 1 vodka of 2033, and the tantalizing, off-kilter nightlife such a world might offer.
Svedka was a small brand that hadn’t done a major campaign when it came to Amalgamated as one of the agency’s first clients, Cameron recalled. “At the time, their sales force was telling us they were having trouble getting into bars, because there were so many new vodkas coming along,” he said. “And so we were like, well, you can be the number one vodka—in the future.”
Femme-bot (originally billed as Svedka_grl) was among other provocative work for Svedka—including a sexy Statue of Liberty that appeared in an early print ad—and became the overarching symbol of the brand and the hyper-ironic, stylish future it inhabited. One ad pictured Femme-bot with the slogan “18 billion Scientologists can’t be wrong.” Another touted “Svedka says thank you for making the gay men’s fashion gene available over-the-counter in 2033.”
“We meant to embrace marketing as a genre and also make fun of it,” Cameron said. “We were trying to get the language of very traditional marketing, but combine it in these bizarre future situations and all the flash points people were noticing.”
Femme-bot got racier over the years. A 2007 ad, which said “Gay men still prefer Svedka over sex with women,” was pulled after running afoul of “good taste” guidelines of the Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S.
Constellation acquired Svedka in 2007 for $384 million. Femme-bot was retired in 2013 as Svedka moved to promote its flavor extensions.
The brand has made quiet changes over the years, including moving production from Sweden to the U.S.—a move that meant removing the Swedish flag from its bottles (Svedka’s name is a portmanteau of Swedish and vodka) and a reformulation that puzzled some observers.
The brand last unveiled a refresh in 2018, known as “Bring Your Own Spirit” and led by R/GA. Its most recent platform, from Cashmere, is known as “Svedka Goes.” Those ads launched in 2021.
Today, in addition to its flagship vodka, Svedka is pushing flavored iterations, a line of canned vodka seltzers called Svedka Tropics, and a variety of Svedka gins.
