The Digital Whiskey Rebellion, Or How Maker’s Returned To The Mark (Part II)
(This is Part II. Click here to read The Digital Whiskey Rebellion Part I.)
At the conclusion of Part I, Marker’s Mark announced that they were lowering the proof of their bourbon to ease a product shortage. Chairman Emeritus Bill Samuels explained that he could not taste a difference and did not think others would, either.
Bourbon drinkers are intensely brand loyal. And proud of it. Maker’s Mark fans saw the proof switch as a profound slap in the face. Watered down whiskey at full price. What a cheap trick! Worse, the company thought its customers were literally too tasteless to notice the difference! Twitter and the blogosphere blazed like that tax inspector’s home in 1791. People who didn’t even drink whiskey fanned the flames. This was just like that sneaky dimple in the bottom of the peanut butter jar. Or those swollen snack packages that hold fewer chips and more puffed air. Corporate contempt for customer loyalty at its worst!
The mainstream media went from touching on the story to jumping on it. Coverage ballooned as the rebellion spread. Many diehard Maker’s drinkers pledged to boycott their favorite beverage. Others swarmed into stores, intent on buying all they could before the lower proof product arrived. Angry e-mails flooded the company’s inboxes. Online comments grew more extreme. The social media fury itself became a mainstream story. Forbes declared that Maker’s had committed “brand suicide.”
So, nearly 210 years after Pennsylvania farmers realized that fighting an overwhelming force would be a fatal error, Maker’s Mark called the whole thing off. Fresh from their weeklong digital tarring and feathering, Bill Samuels and his son, President and CEO Ron Samuels, announced that they had heard their customers loud and clear. They made a mistake, and they were sorry. Maker’s Mark would continue to be bottled at 90 proof. “You spoke. We listened,” Maker’s tweeted, including a link to a full apology on Facebook.
A great cheer echoed across the fields, umm, screens of the republic. “You spoke. We listened,” became a hashtag that became a public kiss-and-make-up fest. D’awww.
Maker’s Mark won praise for listening and learning. A “new Coke” or “new Netflix” fiasco had been headed off at the pass. Meanwhile, some of the same bourbon drinkers who scorned the sale of a lower proof product began searching for the few bottles that had supposedly reached the shelves, intent on snapping them up as treasured collector’s items. Go figure.
The Whiskey Rebellion of 2013 was over. But like the Whiskey Rebellion of old, this year’s model includes a slippery conspiratorial coda.
Back in the day, some said that Alexander Hamilton’s tax was never intended to be a revenue raiser. His true agenda was to create aconfrontation in which the federal government showed the citizenry who was boss by force of arms. After all, few things were guaranteed to generate conflict like a whiskey tax. Especially an unfair one. Today, bars and blogs alike are full of rumors that Maker’s Mark never intended to lower the proof of its bourbon. The whole thing was an insanely brilliant shadow show staged to create fresh buzz around a fifty-something brand. No such thing as bad publicity, right?
I find this “the whole thing was a fake” theory harder to swallow than a mouthful of moonshine. Betting their brand on a dishonest publicity stunt is the complete opposite of the Samuels’ style. Like the rest of the liquor industry and the rest of us, they learned that changing a popular product in the digital age can cause your customers to pop their corks in a very different way than you expected.
(Notes: 1. Maker’s Mark is one of the relatively few American distilleries that uses the less common spelling “whisky” to identify their product. To avoid confusion, I chose to go with the more typical “whiskey” throughout this piece. 2. The Maker’s Mark distillery in Loretto, Kentucky, is a little harder to get to than some of the others on the historic Bourbon Trail, but well worth the effort. 3. The Samuels family founded Maker’s Mark in the 1950s. Though the company has been sold several times and is currently owned by Beam, Inc., the Samuels continue to manage it. 4. In my humble opinion, longtime agency Doe-Anderson’s recent work for Maker’s is some of the best spirit advertising around. Their “It Is What It Isn’t™” tagline is terrific.)
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You probably heard about the Whiskey Rebellion in high school. You may even confuse it with the Fake ID Citation or the Raid On Dad’s Beer Fridge. To clarify, the Whiskey Rebellion was the first true test of the power of the federal government. In an effort to pay off debts accumulated during the revolutionary war, newly minted Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton pushed a tax on whiskey producers through congress. An angry public pushed back, particularly in Pennsylvania.
As often happens when large amounts of booze are involved, things got ugly fast. In 1791, “whiskey rebels” tarred and feathered a tax inspector and a process server. By 1794, shots were being exchanged, a rebel leader was killed, a tax inspector’s home was torched and armed mobs were threatening Pittsburgh.
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