Red Hot And Cool

06 September 2005 By db staff writer

“standfirst”>Campari is officially cool and the drink on every fashionistas’ lips – but it’s still bitter, says Penny Boothman

Many of the finest things in life are an acquired taste – caviar, olives, oysters… Campari? It’s true that the bitter taste of the brightest and reddest aperitif on the market may initially be a little off-putting to some consumers, but surely that’s just part of its charm?

“The consumer can get a bit confused,” says Claire Wilson, brand manager for Campari, Fior brands, “because they see this vivid red and and their eyes translate it to their brain to say sweet, and then they find out it’s not. In Italy it’s much more of a masculine drink, but when we started in the UK we realised that males weren’t really interested in drinking a bright red product! So we switched our focus. Now our target market is about 70:30 female:male, generally of age 30-38. It’s not like a vodka brand targeting 20-year-olds; we know we are a more sophisticated product.”

 Campari was originally developed in 1860, when Gaspare Campari created the recipe, and in 1882 his son Davide started on the export market. “There’s quite a nice story behind it actually,” says Wilson. “He’d fallen in love with an opera singer in Milan and he kept using her as part of his advertising around Italy, but in 1882 she said she was going away to Nice to start singing there. He needed an excuse to follow her so he said it was time to export the product to France; and then after she’d been to France she decided she was going to Moscow and again he followed her; and then she went to New York, so that’s actually how it started as an international brand. But he never got the girl. He just followed her all over the world selling his Campari!”

Fior Brands was created in 2002 as a joint venture between Morris and Bowmore and Campari International to be responsible for Campari, Cinzano and Skyy vodka in the UK. Before that Campari had a distribution deal with First Drinks, but now Fior has picked up the marketing baton as well, and sponsorship has been the main promotional activity.

 “We’ve been focusing on fashion for about three years now,” comments Wilson, and Fior’s Campari and Catwalks campaign has indeed seen considerable success. “We’re getting taken seriously about fashion. And people who, when we first approached them three years ago were like ‘What’s Campari? No, we’re not interested’ are now starting to pick up on it. Now we’re actually getting companies approaching us, which is a big coup for us.”

 The Campari and Catwalks promotion is going to Manchester and Liverpool this year in conjunction with Liverpool-based design emporium Cricket, that famous haunt of Footballers’ Wives (carrier bags from which, incidentally, are now selling on E-bay for a tenner a go).

“Apart from that we’re also in partnership with London Fashion Weekend, where we’re the official catwalk bar. We believe it’s the right kind of environment and a rich targetaudience for us to recruit for the brand,” says Wilson. “Next year? Yes, we’ll continue with fashion because we know it’s working.”

Beautiful people

And hanging around with the beautiful people really does seem to have paid off as Campari has had its hip status confirmed for the second year running. “Last year we were voted as a ‘cool brand’ by the Cool Brands Council and we’ve been nominated again for 2005. There are only two spirits this year – us and Havana Club – that have made it into the spirit category for cool brands, so we’re very excited about that.”

Cool or not, there is still a major push to bring consumers into the category. “Obviously, our big focus is trying to get people to enjoy the taste. We’re trying to get away from the traditional Campari and soda and we’ve been using Campari, lime and tonic as our signature drink; it’s much more refreshing and easier to drink,” says Wilson. “One other thing that we’re pushing this year is summer drinking. We tend to see a huge peak for Campari during the summer, as happens with Pimms, so this year we’ve developed pitcher recipes and we’ve been working with the on-trade to create cocktail competitions throughout the UK in order to develop more cocktail recipes.”

One such cocktail competition was in fact expertly judged by the drinks business’s own Robyn Lewis, who slurped her way through so many delicious red beverages, she now can’t seem to remember who actually won.

It may be red hot and full of Italian passion, but Campari is definitely the cool drink to be seen with.