Case Study for Agency
03-1014971-361

Situation - 1996

The distilled spirits market is in the midst of a long-term sales
decline. Within that declining category, Jack Daniel’s had been losing
sales, but at a slower rate than the industry. The prognosis for the
future, however, was bleak. A just-concluded tracking study indicated
that the youngest legal age drinkers had low awareness of Jack Daniel’s
and a poor image of the brand on several important attribute
dimensions. These poor ratings carried over into these GenXer’s
awareness and opinions of the long-running advertising campaign.

Marketing Challenge

The mandate was simple: increase sales in a declining category by
improving awareness, attitudes and sales among 21 to 29 year old legal
age drinkers while holding onto to the Brand’s core franchise among
older drinkers.

Application of Solutions

To meet this marketing challenge, the agency implement the “Meaningful
Reality” account planning process to a) develop a strategy, b) set a
creative challenge and c) develop a brand-building campaign to
revitalize the brand among this younger, GenX target.

In the Meaningful Reality account planning process the agency conducted
a brand audit and a consumer audit to identify the ownable overlap –
the segment of brand attributes and benefits that are relevant and
important to consumers.

To do that the agency and client team conducted qualitative and
quantitative research among the GenX target. At the end of the
research, the team identified four key consumer insights:

1. That one’s choice of distilled spirits represented an important
“badge” to GenXers. The Jack Daniel’s advertising campaign needed to
reinforce their perception of Jack Daniel’s as a leadership brand. The
small space “black & white” campaign did not.

2. That two core Jack Daniel’s emotional values were confidence and
masculinity.

3. That the “unchanged” concept (i.e. the process of making jack
Daniel’s was unchanged since it’s inception) was powerful and added
credibility to both the leadership and premium quality images.

4. That, importantly, Jack Daniel’s has a sense of humor, which made
the Brand both attractive and approachable.

The ownable overlap, then, contained the following elements - Jack
Daniel’s is unchanged (classic quality), confident, humorous and
masculine – which was developed into a creative brief.

As part of that brief, the agency set the following creative challenge:
Make Heritage Hip.

This Ownable Overlap and creative challenge led to the Brand’s new
“Color” integrated marketing campaign run in media aimed at the GenX
target including, but not limited to outdoor, point-of-sale, magazine,
bar promotions and magazine advertising.

Results

One year after the start of the new campaign..
1. Jack Daniel’s sales had increased

2. Category sales had flattened out – in large part due to Jack
Daniel’s performance.

3. Unaided and aided awareness of Jack Daniel’s among the GenX target
had risen significantly

4. Key attribute ratings had double digit increases.