It's always kind of fun to watch Joseph Jaffe do his "this validates me!" dance. He's in full swing on that today as he passes on word that vodka maker ABSOLUT is pulling out of print advertising in favor of the internet. ABSOLUT has been a mainstay of print advertising with their long-running and display-worthy series of ads that contain the copy point "ABSOLUT _____" and feature their bottle in any number of settings.
It will be interesting to see if this leads the vodka maker in a new advertising direction or if they simply use the internet as a new home for the existing campaign. The ads would be a natural fit for pop-ups or banner ads but it also would be great if they made the ads available in an RSS feed. Then when a new one was produced it would be readily accessible by all. Imagine the kind of buzz that would be created for new entries in the series if, say, a bunch of bloggers who write about advertising (yeah, like that's a real job) could see and pass those along when they were created.
1. Whatever Mr Jaffe may say, that's not what the original Ad Week story actually says. Go back to the source. It specifically says Absolut is NOT giving up on print ads altogether. See below:
"Absolut, the vodka whose bottle-icon campaign was one of the most high-profile campaigns ever, is about to radically alter its marketing strategy away from print to the Internet.
The move is a significant shift for a marketer whose print advertising crossed the barrier from mere liquor promotion into the lexicon of pop culture.
While Absolut is not abandoning print, outdoor and TV ads, those media will take a back seat to the Web."
Posted at 9:30AM on Nov 29th 2005 by Martin Croft