Cachaçagora - Cachaça, Caipirinha, And Cocktails

Abelha Cachaça's Official Site Launches, Gives More Details On Social Responsibility

If you remember, diligent Flickr scanning got me the scoop on Abelha cachaça, which is currently a side project of London's Anthony Goh.

Anthony showed up in the comments to tell us that the official Abelha site is now live.

Most interesting is the site's description of the various imperatives for organic cachaça. As you know, the intersection of cachaça and social responsibility is a favorite topic of mine, particularly given the increased international attention on Brazil right now.

To this end, Abelha has gone so far as securing certifications on the export and import ends: Brazil's Instituto Biodinâmico (IBD) and the UK's Organic Farmers & Growers (OF&G).

And, if Abelha's environmental and human-rights arguments aren't enough for you, there's always this one:

There’s a growing school of thought that says organic wines and spirits give less severe hangovers, as there are less odd chemicals in them. We’re happy to believe this, but in the name of good science, we will continue to experiment by drinking almost daily until we have collected enough results to make a statistically robust claim.

Hey... Whatever makes the case!

U.S. Cachaça Marketing: The Long Road Ahead

My day job often requires that I travel a lot around the U.S. and sometimes internationally. This means I go to a number of restaurants. Some of these restaurants have bars. Some of these bars have cachaça.

Some don't know they have it. Some had it at one time and stopped carrying it.

A guy I know at Reuters once told me that newsrooms often follow a "three's a trend" rule. That is, if something happens three or more times, it's therefore okay (at least journalistically) to call it a "trend".

Just to be safe — and hedging for the fact that I'd never call myself a "journalist" — here are four stories that should alarm your favorite cachaça brands.

A while ago, in Chicago, the waitress told me when I sat down that the restaurant didn't have cachaça. She was surprised after the meal when I pointed out that they actually offered no fewer than two cachaças on the dessert menu. (They thoughtfully comped me on the cachaça as a reward for catching the oversight.)

In a Manhattan hotel bar, the bartender was equally surprised when, after telling me they absolutely did not carry cachaça, I calmly pointed to the bottle behind the bar to show her where it was. Then she remembered that the brand actually held a pretty big bash at the bar's opening. That was kind of like remembering that great Super Bowl ad but forgetting the name of the sponsor.

During another trip to Manhattan, this time near the Financial District, the waitress couldn't name the brand of cachaça that the bar was carrying when I ordered a caipirinha. (Update: My wife reminded me that, in fact, I originally asked the waitress what brand of cachaça they used in their caipirinhas. The waitress actually said they didn't carry cachaça! This led me to ask what she thought the caipirinha was made from.) I'm pretty certain she'd have been able to rattle off every whiskey, vodka, and tequila, though.

This past Saturday, at a swank Patrick-Bateman-would-eat-here Asian fusion restaurant during BlogOrlando, the bartender told me that they didn't carry cachaça. "It just didn't sell," she told me.

"It just didn't sell?" In Orlando, for Pete's sake! Sure, it's probably not even close to Miami in terms of its Brazilian immigrant population, but even a Google search of local Brazilian-owned-and-related businesses would indicate that there's likely a decently sized community there.

All of this should greatly disturb more than a few cachaça marketers who read this blog. It's also not such good news for those of us who'd like cachaça to be as available as vodka or tequila.

We've seen the ads. We've seen the onanistically conceived web sites. We've seen the viral videos that brands hope will go viral. For all that, though, cachaça simply won't be successful in the U.S. until brands take the time to educate every step of the product's delivery to consumers both current and wished-for.

Photo Credit: "Confusion!" by LuluP

"For Relaxing Times, Make It... Sagatiba Time?"

Apologies... Aimee over at Sagatiba's PR firm, YC Media, sent this over and I couldn't help but go for the Lost In Translation reference.

Yup... That's Bill Murray. This was snapped during Sagatiba's New York Fashion Week event.

Cachaça's Rising Interest In The U.S.

Playing around with Google Search Insights, I wanted to see what I could divine about cachaça interest in the U.S.

Above, you see a normalized-to-100 graph of searches in the U.S. for "cachaça". Clearly an upward, seasonal trend over the past four years, with a significant spike this year.

The truly cool thing about this Google trick is that you can download the results into a spreadsheet and play with the data a little in Excel. The red line is a 14-period moving average of the search behavior, to make the chart a little easier to look at and derive meaning from.

Picked a heckuva time to start this little project, eh?

The picture gets even more interesting when you see what people are searching for and from where. More after the jump.

Cachaça Brand? Media Company? Why Not Both?

more cat pictures

No one really wants to watch advertising. To remain relevant, brands need to adopt behavior more akin to media companies, delivering their brand message within content that offers educational, entertainment, or journalistic quality.

This is why I'm very much into what Leblon and Sagatiba are doing on YouTube.

Last week, Sagatiba quietly launched its SagatibaUS YouTube channel, which will evidently be the home for its excellent Premium Side Of Brasil mini-documentaries.

(Earlier episodes were previously hosted on an account named "paulosagatiba". Global Brand Ambassador John Gakuru has some of his own videos up as well.)

Rather than hit you over the head with cloying messages about how great its product is, Sagatiba wants to align itself with everything that is good -- "premium", even -- about Brazil. The first videos posted to the SagatibaUS account offer perspectives from a Brasilian fashion designer, a carpenter, and a chef.

Leblon's content is quite a bit more obvious about its commercial interests, though also appears to be doing a bit more to educate folks about cachaça itself.

They have the Naren and Jacob series, helpful how-to videos, and even a music video that (I'm guessing here) is aimed at getting Americans to pronounce "caipirinha" correctly. (You just have to get past the notion that someone would name their daughter "Caipirinha".)

Heck, they even have a site called, appropriately enough, Cachaça 101, with an entertaining man-on-the-street video of random pedestrians mangling the pronunciation of our favorite distilled spirit.

The point is, both efforts are engaging at different levels. Advertising, in the strictest sense, interrupts -- your favorite TV show, radio program, magazine, city's skyline, etc. Educating bartenders and consumers as to the value of cachaça (and, hopefully, entertaining them along the way) can only be a good thing. 

Cabana's Ads: When It Gets So Loud You Can't Avoid It

I swore to myself when Cabana Cachaça's racy ads and Web site started to make waves -- "straight-up porn" according to Time Out Chicago -- I'd just ignore it. It's pretty clear that their marketing is going for the linkbait factor and I'm not inclined to indulge it too much.

But, when you're a blog that's all-cachaça-all-the-time, there's an expectation that you'd have something to say about such a widely covered campaign.

First, let me just say that America's Puritan roots are showing a little too much these days. One might think that, decades after pure-as-the-driven-snow Julie "Mary Poppins" Andrews insisted on showing the moviegoing public her breasts, and days after the FCC gave CBS a pass for Nipplegate, that we'd be past all this.

Nope. Not a chance. Alas, there remains this irrational fear. A uniquely American fear of the female nipple that's getting bigger.

(Err... The fear, I mean.)

On the other hand, I personally tend to find the whole "sex sells" ethic cynical, especially when you're selling a product (alcohol) that, when tied too closely to sex, often results in rather unfortunate consequences in the real world.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a prude and you're not going to find me hanging out in front of Cabana's importer naked wearing a sandwich board chanting "Spirits Not Skin!", "Cachaça Not Crotch!", or "Tipples Not Nipples!"

However, I'm inclined to pay more attention to a cachaça brand that has more to say about the craft and the product.

Surf over to BlogHer for the best roundup of this campaign I've seen so far, exploring the ads much more deeply than mere reactionary feminism.

One commenter even wonders whether it is the women who are being exploited...

...or the men.

Some Online Marketing Thoughts For Cachaça Makers

So, I'm not quite one month into the grand experiment I call Cachaçagora, but I'm nevertheless moved to write about the experience so far.

I'd have to say that the project has been quite illuminating. Furthermore, I was quite pleasantly surprised that a few cachaça makers were looking hard enough that they actually found me at this early stage! At every point, even those times when we disagreed, the correspondence has been thoughtful, meaningful, rewarding, and conducive to developing mutual understanding.

Maybe this is the "day's residue" of my day job creeping in, but I've been thinking about some easy-lift ideas that would help cachaça makers with their online marketing and, in turn, help us work together to educate the northern hemisphere about the virtues of our favorite distilled spirit. More after the jump.