The shots Guide to...Absolut's Print Ads (Part 2)

Last week, we began our look at the history of Absolut's print advertising with a guide to how its iconic 'bottle shaped' work came into being and how Andy Warhol started their series of artist collaborations. This week, we're taking the story up to the present day, including their seasonal campaigns, support of the LGBT community and more.

Absolut-ely Fabulous: Absolut Advertise to the LGBT Community

Though these days you can hardly move for brands desperately trying to cash in on the 'pink pound' advertising themselves to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities (as our recent guide to the ads released for Pride in London showed). However, when Absolut started advertising within gay magazines After Dark and the Advocate in 1981, almost no major brands were prepared to do that. As site Marketing the Rainbow said in their guide to Absolut's LGBT-focused work, quoting Todd Evans, who provided media services for Absolut in the '80s:

"Mr. Evans recalled how Absolut not only bought ad pages in magazines like The Advocate, but also bought back covers at a time when “we couldn’t get anyone” to take such highly visible positions. “And Absolut locked them up for two years,” he added."

 Although these ads at first were the same as those used within mainstream publications - the first Absolut ad to feature in The Advocate being the Absolut Perfection ad we discussed last week - with hindsight many of the ads chosen for the publications can't help but have special significations to an LGBT audience, such as Absolut Freedom[above, centre], which appeared in the magazine in 1997.  

However, the vodka brand would go on from these implicitly LGBT-themed ads to more explicit support, doubling down on this support both in their advertising and in their partnerships, with Absolut known for its sponsorship of Pride parades, parties, and, of course RuPaul's Drag Race, where the brand was omnipresent across the first handful of series.

These sponsorships also led the brand's agency, TBWA, create themed print-ads to tie in with these events. For example, Absolut Achievement [right], a bottle made of film canisters featuring the names of notable queer films (in place of the titles in the original ad which featured Steven Spielberg films), ran in the programs for a number of film festivals.

From LGBT-focused ads in LGBT-focused publications, Absolut began running such ads in mainstream publications, like Absolut Pride [above, left], which ran in Entertainment Weekly in 1997. They also weighed into the gay marriage debate with Absolut Commitment, featuring two grooms on the top of a bottle-shaped cake.

Absolut Goes Seasonal

However, Pride was just one of the many yearly occasions that the Absolut bottle ads would cover across their three-plus decade history.

Christmas

Naturally, Christmas was the most revisited season, being the event you most need vodka to get through. As well as creating ads with bottles made from train tracks, trees, and tinsel [our favourites above], they also created Absolut Season wrapping paper, featuring a snowglobe made out of an Absolut bottle [below].

Halloween

 We've all had that one time where we had just a touch too much vodka and starting howling at the moon, right? No, just us? Well Absolut are with us with this spooky work (run with Absolut Halloween and Absolut Howl headings) that show Absolut Mandarin doing exactly that.

Valentine's Day

Love is in the air with this kissing campaign, which would thriftily have mistletoe added to it to become a Christmas campaign 10 months later.

Life Beyond the Bottle

After the seasons, there were ads celebrating actual season like spring and summer. Plus ads featuring bottle-themed takes on classic albums, classic films, fashion and art. Eventually, though, the agency had to call a day on the campaign that had led to over 1500 separate print ads.

This fateful day happened in 2007, when TBWAChiatDay launched In An Absolut World, which relegated the bottle to the bottom right corner, with the ads instead showing how what an 'Absolut world' would look like. One ad, for example, shows the ads of Times Square replaced with great works of art, where another showed a power station pumping bubbles into the atmosphere rather than pollution.

The ads are fun in their own way, but did not quite catch on in the same way the bottle-shaped ads did. Partly this can be blamed to the fact that Carlsberg had already tread the same ground with their Carlsberg Don't Do... ad series. Similarities are also noticeable in other ads from the series, with another ad looking a lot (probably intentionally) like the iconic Pregnant Man campaign from the 1970s:

Whatever the reason, however, these ads did not capture the imagination, leading in part to the brand becoming the third best-selling brand, down from first as it was in the '90s. However, with a new agency and a great new TV ad, could things be about to turn for Absolut?