Check out this amazing campaign that surfaced in the Wall Street iPad app that I was browsing over the weekend:
I landed up here:
Honestly speaking, if I had not stopped drinking, I would have ordered this bottle (and shipped it to our office in San Fran)
The concept, the involvement and the VANITY of owning this bottle was overwhelming.
Just to understand what really was the differentiator, I checked on similar prices of Johnnie Walker bottles in the USA.
This is what I found:
Sure there was a 12.5% premium, that was not a big deal considering the amazing value add of getting my name engraved on a bottle!
I looked a bit more and saw that for the other bottles, the price difference was quite stark (the difference for Gold Label was 35% and the difference for Black Label was 27 %) and these were not engravable!
Lessons learnt:
– Clever e-commerce is NOT about price discounting, cutting and giving deals! It’s the reverse as seen in this case.
– Note that the engraver is NOT Johnnie Walker – it’s an independent company, creating additional value for JW. I am sure they have a tight working agreement, but this proves that great partnerships between the producer of goods and the re-seller can exist and make money for both (so it’s not always a ‘commission on sales’ that gets reduced)
– This re-positions Blue Label into being even more aspirational and avant-garde than before. Apple allows engraving on its products but I had not seen this on a normal liquor bottle before.
This concept also ensures that the bottle remains in the bar even after it’s consumed, which obviously then triggers a repurchase. A bottle like this also becomes a bragging point at a party.
– Once a consumer lands on the e-commerce site, he looks around. That’s the trap. I am there, I am impressed, I am vulnerable. I do not have the time to check if the Gold or the Black Label prices are more or less than the market. I will buy!!
E-commerce players MUST learn from campaigns like this.
I want to buy stuff that makes me feel happy, excited, vain, brag-worthy and special.
I DON’T wanna buy another shirt from another e-commerce site because I don’t give a shit about ordinary shirts anymore. But if the shirt allows me to embroider (NOT PRINT) my rodinhood logo and name in red and black colour, then I will be very interested. And at that point, I won’t give a damn about the price…
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