Heineken’s Star Bottle Arrives Stateside with New Campaign

Heineken’s new taller, sleeker and starred bottle is already available in 170 countries and is now being rolled out in the United States with a new “Arrive Big” ad campaign featuring the brand’s “Man of the World” in such exotic locations as Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Lagos, Nigeria and New York City. In each location, the protagonist finds himself in prickly situations at various clubs, yet somehow ends up with the girl and the beer (and an #arrivebig hashtag, to boot) in the end.

“Our priority is to ‘break the mold’ in beer marketing with cinematic, sophisticated ads that feature our ‘Man of the World,’ a progressive, cultured guy, who is inventive in any situation,” said Colin Westcott-Pitt, vice president of Heineken, in a press release. Heineken doesn’t go so far as to pull a New Coke move and break the mold inside the bottle, of course.Continue reading...

Often when a celebrity dies, no matter what kind of damage they may have done to themselves, the culture, or their families, their image suddenly gets cleaned and polished up quite nicely. 

Whoever is controlling the after-death image of Frank Sinatra, though, appears to want to go in the other direction. The mystique of Sinatra – a lady-killing, cocktail-swilling, cocked-hat-wearing Vegas-owning charmer with a sweet singing voice – isn’t getting cleaned up at all. Instead, his famed tippling ways are being amplified by Jack Daniel’s, which is bottling the Ol' Blue Eyes magic with Sinatra Select whisky.

To support the launch, Jack Daniel’s parent Brown Forman is now opening “Sinatra Experience” installations in duty-free shops at airports across the globe that will allow travelers to take a sip of the limited-edition whisky, check out images of Sinatra in action, and listen to his tunes.Continue reading...

There’s lots of hoopla going around to celebrate the Rolling Stones turning 50. Concerts are coming up next week in London and in early December in Newark, New Jersey. A new 3-disc, 50-song greatest-hits box set, GRRR!, comes out next week as well. A new documentary about the band, Crossfire Hurricane, is hitting HBO and the BBC and theaters next week, joining another documentary on the band that's now playing theaters, Charlie Is My Darling.

And keep your eyes peeled for the massive Stones coffee-table book. Right about now, you can’t escape the Stones — heck, you can even drink up to Mick, Keith and the boys with a special line of drinks being sold in Japan.Continue reading...

Space travel has long been a subject of fascination, so private-sector companies such as Virgin Galactic have sprung up to try and eventually put mere mortals up into the high frontier where Neil Armstrong made history. Now we've got something to toast the late Armstrong with.

Scottish whisky maker Ardbeg has turned out a limited-edition whisky, Ardbeg Galileo, to make some noise and hopefully a few sales from a curious experiment the company is involved in.

According to the BBC, Texas-based space research company NanoRacks asked Ardbeg to be involved in a two-year space experiment late last year. Soon after, vials filled with chemical compounds from Ardbeg’s distillery were shot up to the International Space Station on a Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan. The chemicals will undergo the experiment in near zero gravity while Ardbeg oversees the same experiment here on Earth.

Ardbeg, naturally, couldn't miss this galactic marketing opportunity. Its limited-edition Ardbeg Galileo, marketed to "astro-nuts," is described as a “12-year-old single malt whisky (from) a vatting of different styles of Ardbeg laid down in 1999,” the BBC notes. Talk about whisky-a-go-go.Continue reading...

From Whisky on Ice to Whisky so Nice

Those looking for a taste of history will soon be able to buy a Scottish whisky replicating one that sat on ice underneath the South Pole hut of explorer Ernest Shackleton for a century. The whisky, dating from 1896 or 1897 recently make it back to Scotland, where Whyte & Mackay Master Blender Richard Paterson created an exact replica, 50,000 bottles of which will go on sale in a matter of weeks, Whyte & Mackay announced. The bottles will sell for £100 (about $160), with 5 percent of each sale going to the New Zealand nonprofit that is preserving Shackleton’s hut, according to Global Post.Continue reading...

Get Ready-to-Drink with Jack Daniel’s

If mixing up a Jack and Coke is just too much trouble, Jack Daniel’s has come to the rescue.

It is coming out with a line of ready-to-drink mixers this month.

Flavors include Jack & Cola and Jack & Ginger, with Jack & Diet Cola to be released later in the month.

The new drinks are 5% ABV and the company claims that they are the first ready-to-drink beverages packaged in aluminium bottles.

After the jump: The devil and Jim Beam, German engineering meets Scots ingenuity, and Bulleit Bourbon shoots for Rye lovers.Continue reading...

The airport duty-free shop has long been a favored stop for whiskey lovers looking to stock up on high-end hooch tax-free.

Now Dublin Airport is providing even more incentive to do some spirits shopping in between flights with a premium pot still whiskey that will exclusively sold at its Irish Whiskey Collection store in Terminal 2.

Midleton distillery, best known internationally for producing the Jameson brand, released its 19-year-old single-cask Single Pot Still Irish whiskey to the airport shop to mark the terminal’s opening.

The whiskey, at cask strength (53.7% alcohol), was aged in an American bourbon barrel, a small piece of which is included with the whiskey. Only 200 bottles are being produced, retailing for €260 ($354).Continue reading...

In the most populous country in the world, Johnnie Walker is launching a massive digital and social media campaign focusing on individuality and celebrating modern-day pioneers in China.

The campaign, which ties into the whisky’s “Keep Walking” theme, is called “Yulu” (“Words of a Journey”) and features mini documentaries on leaders in business and the arts, from Zhou YunPeng, a blind folk singer and poet, to Xiao Peng, entrepreneur and founder of 1rest.com.

The subjects of these high-quality documentaries are certainly not shilling Johnnie Walker – the whisky isn’t mentioned at all by them – but rather, they are part of building a brand associated with following one’s dreams.Continue reading...