Vodkow is “moo”-ving the needle when it comes activating and packaging over the holidays to stand out from other cream liquors.
Instead of focusing on a warm hearth and holiday gatherings like the rest of its competitive set, the lactose-free brand is activating with vintage sci-fi themed art installations at two Greater Toronto Area malls, Sherway Gardens and Square One.
Last year, the Ontario government gave small producers the ability to sell their wares more broadly, and Vodkow pounced, getting special occasions permits that is helping to put its products in front of more people, whether it’s through farmers’ markets, or in the case of this activation, shopping malls, explains company co-founder Omid McDonald.
“We’re the first distillery to explore this new freedom,” McDonald says.
He tell strategy it’s a company founded on innovation, as the only lactose-free cream liquor in the market. Also, its vodka is carbon neutral, and it repurposes unused milk sugars that would otherwise go to waste and turn to methane.
“We asked a Toronto-based artist to come up with a of expressing our way of taking the best of dairy tradition forward into the future,” McDonald explains. Artist Alex McLeod took inspiration from that idea by referencing Vodkow’s home base of Almonte, Ont., which is also the Ottawa-area location of an infamous 1980s UFO sighting.
The juxtaposition of UFOs and cows, McDonald says, is a fun way of telling its brand innovation story. But, he says, Vodkow is not just process innovation, but packaging too.
As McDonald explains, the old-timey milk bottle reinforces the distillery’s dairy heritage, while its colour scheme helps to stand out against darker spirits popular around the holidays, like Baileys and Sheridan’s. What’s more, the package weighs half the amount an average LCBO bottle of a similar size does, which is important for sustainability.
“Providing sustainable options for cream liquors is essential for the long-term viability of the category” says McDonald, who bemoans the fact that 70% of cream liquors are imported from Ireland.
Having a vodka, rather than a whiskey base, also helps the brand attract a younger consumer, McDonald says, as the aforementioned brands are typically associated with grandparents.
Vodkow is also innovating with a variety gift pack, which is rarely done with liquors. It has maple, coffee, chocolate and classic flavours in a “cute milk carton,” a packaging innovation people are really warming to. Packages that look like creamer cups are a further innovation here that make Vodkow a stocking stuffer for adults, McDonald says.
The company’s innovation has also garnered it the Dairy Farmers of Canada’s iconic “blue cow” logo, which is a first in the alcoholic beverage category.
The brand is available in the LCBO, some SAQ stores and some stores in Alberta. It was brought in as a seasonal product by the BC Liquor Board recently.
The art installations run until Christmas eve. The brand worked with Makers on the art installation, and the fabrications were produced by Ram Designs in St. Catharines.
