Drambuie, the family-owned liqueur company trying to break into younger markets, yesterday launched its latest marketing weapon.
The distinctive dark bottle will gradually give way to a more streamlined clear glass version, boosted later this year by the brand's first UK television campaign since 2003.
Phil Parnell, the chief executive brought in by the Mackinnon family owners in 2005 to re-engineer the business and rejuvenate the product, admitted that Drambuie's five-year campaign had experienced a tough year with cost-conscious consumers. "I think it has been a very difficult year for premium brands, all the evidence is that consumers are downtrading in all categories. Champagne sales are terrible."
Drambuie, he said, was "trading pretty much in line with the market" in its main sales area, the UK and US, though its next biggest, Greece, had been slower to weaken.
In the UK, the on-trade continued to suffer, not helped by the wave of pub closures.
Parnell said he planned to increase marketing spend from 30% to 40% of revenue in the group's new financial year which starts next month.
"We have got rid of our bank debt, we are generating quite a lot of cash, we are not a capital-intensive business. Last year we had £9m of cash on the balance sheet and some of that is going to be invested in upping our expenditure from broadly £6m to £8m next year."
Internet-based communication and the "Drambuie Pursuit", a race across the Highlands intended to evoke the spirit of Culloden and now in its fourth year, remain planks of the marketing strategy.
Miranda Rennie, marketing director, said of Drambuie's packaging: "Whilst the bottle is something of an icon, it's so heavily associated with after-dinner liqueurs that we decided to take a radical approach."
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