Malternative Marketing: The Sparks Story
by Christine Smallwood
October 2004
In 2002, when San Francisco-based beverage marketing firm McKenzie River Corporation decided to launch a new drink called Sparks, the company eschewed television commercials, radio spots, billboards and print media. Instead, they opted for the type of giveaways meant to incite a flurry of positive “word of mouth” testimonials to the brand—a strategy sometimes referred to as “viral marketing.” But in Philadelphia and other metropolitan centers surveyed, pushing the sickly sweet mix of alcohol, taurine and caffeine has failed to translate into sales. Sparks currently sells a paltry 500 cases a month in the Delaware Valley's five counties.
McKenzie's first move was to recycle a strategy it had deployed for its now-divested St. Ides malt liquor: it called DJ Pooh. The prolific Los Angeles producer, who had once put together a St. Ides radio spot, fashioned a frenetic sound clip for the Sparks website. It features a looop of the beverage's three main ingredients (neglecting citric acid, Siberian ginseng, malt and FD&C yellow number five) against the simple commands of a robotic voice: “Jumpstart your nightlife. Drink Sparks.”
The company also commissioned a clip from electronic music producer Miguel Depedro. Depedro, who operates his sampler under the stage name Kid 606, in turn mentioned the beverage to his friend Matthew Werth, a Philadelphian breaking into the youth marketing and promotions business after the sale of his record label File 13. Werth had hoped to strike a deal. What he found was a kindred spirit.
“The first rep I dealt with was totally fucking cool, totally on the level. She dated a guy in the Rapture,” he recalls. He declined to give the rep's name.
The rep sent forty cases of Sparks to the Last Drop Café at 13th and Pine, where Werth's business partner, former barista David Pianka, receives his packages. Werth later brought the 960 unopened sixteen-ounce orange and silver cans to a friend's party in South Philadelphia. The beverage is now a regular sponsor of the parties he and Pianka promote in various cities.
This chain of events has repeated in urban centers around the country and, at the time of this writing, shows no signs of slowing. Only two months ago, the Los Angeles management of the retail store owned by Vice magazine lost its beer sponsors and struck a deal with Sparks. (A store associate also corroborated the Sparks rep's alleged romantic link to a member of the Rapture.) The so-called energy malt has been spotted at galleries in San Francisco and bars in Austin. Steven Grasse, of Philadelphia's advertising firm Gyro Worldwide, recently threw a party for Sailor Jerry, a brand of tattoo-inspired clothing, accessories and rum, through Vice, and Sparks showed up there as well. In Philadelphia, New York and Boston, Werth, Pianka and other Friends of Sparks accept and distribute cases of free product in what Rolling Stone has dubbed a “clever marketing scheme” of “sponsoring hip downtown open bar parties.”
But this scheme may have had an unintended side effect: Sparks is seen as a beverage of sponsored parties and open bars, gallery openings and invite-only events—a beverage, in other words, that ought to be free.
To be sure, on a recent evening at a newly-refurbished Old City bar, dozens hovered around the bar shouting “Sparks” long after the party's allotment of 600 free cans had been consumed. The upstairs bartender claimed that she then sold many of the drinks at the full price of $3.50 each, even though there was still free Miller High Life available.
“[Sparks] is like crack, only you don't get addicted,” explained Corey Krumb, a lanky 23 year-old, neon can in hand.
Indeed, the second-floor bartender later said she usually sells Sparks to “indie rockers” who have trouble locating cocaine. The bar's manager estimates their average weekly sales at ten cases, less than half of what was consumed for free in a matter of hours.
Sparks has not been without enthusiasts. Michael Gray, the director of marketing at Origlio Beverages, the wholesale distributor of Sparks in Philadelphia, Chester, Bucks, Montgomery and Delaware counties, says that although the drink does poor business in the urban pocket and enjoys generally “spotty” distribution, it is well-received in the suburbs.
Gee Roman, a McKenzie River representative, refused to comment on sales of Sparks, or the company's marketing strategy, or the veracity of Werth's claim that his first contact with the company was acquainted with a member of the Rapture. She also declined to discuss the beverage's target audience. “People are going to drink what they prefer to drink,” she said. “Obviously we market [Sparks] to everyone.”
Gray explained that Pennsylvania's liquor laws, which prohibit the sale of alcohol at non-licensed stores, have negatively affected local sales. According to Werth, Sparks is more widely available—and boasts broader appeal—in New York City, where he currently lives, than in Philadelphia, although numerous bars and stores surveyed in the five boroughs reported no knowledge of its existence.
“You see it at shows, bodegas and corner stores,” he insisted. “It seems like it's more of a drink that belongs. It's like an extreme drink or something.”
People close to the brand usually avoid speaking to the media. Carmelita Morales, who handles Sparks for New York's addVice Marketing (a subsidiary of the magazine) agreed to speak for this story before changing her mind only days later.
“A while back, a New York Times reporter wanted to get in touch with our rep,” Pianka said. “She was like, ‘No way.'”
“We can't give out any information,” Roman explained. “Even the smallest bit could set off the competition. Any company out there that makes beer could do what we do.” Yet it has taken Roman's company of about 100 employees some years to figure out what to do.
In the 1980s, McKenzie River chief executive officer J. Minnott Wessinger, whose father had sold the family brewery in 1979, started developing new beverage brands (all McKenzie's products are brewed under a standard industry contract in SAB Miller facilities). He debuted St. Ides in 1987. In 1991, he found himself in a firestorm after Public Enemy rapper and malt liquor foe Chuck D. realized D.J. Pooh's St. Ides radio spots were using his voice without permission. The ads were pulled. Then, in 1997, Wessinger faced crticism that St. Ides Special Blend Freeze and Squeeze, a fruit-flavored frozen malt liquor sometimes stocked near ice cream and other desserts, appealed to children and teenagers. The product was pulled. In 1999, he sold St. Ides to the Stroh Brewing Company, which has since licensed it to the Pabst Brewing Company.
1992 saw the birth of another effort that ended in a sale. In that year, McKenzie River launched Black Star beer with television spots, produced by the advertising agency Wieden and Kennedy, that traced the product's lineage to the 1920s in a fictitious documentary style. Though the spots were critically acclaimed, Wessinger told Advertising Age magazine a year later that he feared they were too trendy. He was interested in building a long-lasting brand, not cashing in on a fad. In 2002, Black Star was acquired by a privately held firm in Montana.
Enter Sparks, one of two remaining eggs in McKenzie's basket. The other is Steel Reserve, a beer with 8.1 percent alcohol content that does well in the local “urban” market.
“I can't give you any numbers, but they're substantially higher than Sparks. It's very popular. It's like Colt 45, and about as popular. It's steady, well-received,” said Gray.
And it does well in urban neighborhoods. “If you're not hanging in the ‘hood, you probably wouldn't see it.”
Some products rely on their quality to sell, and any success that Sparks does or does not enjoy may be a simple matter of taste. Mike Wiebe, 28, of the Denton, Texas-based band the Riverboat Gamblers, wrote a song called “Shots and Sparks.” “I'm into the fruity taste of it,” he explained.
Independent music promoter Sean Agnew, who made the unlikely claim that he had been drinking Sparks since 2000, before it existed, swears by it. “I love Sparks!” he shouted. “It makes you act like a robot on cocaine.”
Others are less effusive. Roy Miles, a music video producer and animator in Oakland, confessed that he tried Sparks just once, at a gallery show in San Francisco. “I drank a lot of them one night just because they were free. But they were terrible. They taste like cough syrup and ear wax.”
The Sparks online campaign is replete with aggressive music samples, flashy website tricks and testimonials from Sparks fans who claim to drink as much as 100 cans of the stuff per week (a recent post from Toby Leddy of Norman, Oklahoma reads: “Could you mail me some Sparks? I LOVE SPARKS! AGHAHGHHH!!!). But the bulk of McKenzie River's marketing budget seems to have been concentrated on making the brand readily and freely available to “early adopters,” the supposedly influential group of young consumers known for swigging free Vitamin Water and skimming free magazines. Thus far, however, the more punctual, just-on-time adopters have yet to show. Yet McKenzie's efforts, bankrolled by Steel Reserve's success, show no sign of abating—so long as event and partygoers continue stomaching the corporate sponsorship and the Sparks.
“I've seen it at parties in San Francisco,” says Miles. “The parties in San Francisco are a lot trendier. It's easier for marketing firms to get in, whereas Oakland is always grassroots, they don't want the sponsors. People in the city are like, ‘Oh, free alcoholic orange sodas, we'll pass that out, sure.'”
“Sparks seems like a corny drink,” he continued. “I don't think people in San Francisco buy it, but they drink it cause it's free.”
― gygax! (gygax!), Friday, 21 January 2005 21:10 (twenty-one years ago)
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