Midori Lounge Lizard is Green Around the Gills

In July, Hiram Walker & Sons Inc., Southfield, Mich., introduced its first commemorative bottle for Midori Original Melon Liqueur. The green bottle portrays the brand's reptilian mascot: Iggy the Iguana.Midori marketers hope the run of 100,000 bottles will aid them in developing incremental sales at the off-premise level. "It is a tactical tool to expand our distribution," says Paul Francis, Midori brand manager.Available for a limited period, the molded-glass bottle comes with a die-cut neck tag also shaped like an iguana. The tag has two recipes calling for Midori printed inside."Iggy is very hip and irreverent and he really communicates the brand's image of being fun and outgoing," says Francis. "It seemed a natural extension [of the marketing] to do a bottle paying homage to him."The company initially planned to have only the neck tags and cartons supporting the bottle in stores. But then, says Francis, "we realized that without P-O-S, our outer shippers have to do a lot of advertising for us." Therefore, a 6-foot-tall Iggy standee accompanies every order that goes out. Iggy also appears on the shipper, visually connecting the corrugated standee to the stacks of product on display.The company expected supermarkets and liquor stores to stack three or four of the cases, slash the top box on an angle to reveal the bottles, and set the standee on guard alongside the boxes. What they've also found is that distributors like the promotion so much, they're placing it on-premise, too. The bottles are being placed on backbars and customers are lining up to have their pictures taken with the Iggy standee.The standee, partly responsible for the character's success and popularity, has been used previously. Francis ordered an additional 2,000 standees to draw attention to the commemorative bottle displays. The standee was printed by Philipps Litho, Grafton, Wis., and mounted and die cut by C.D. Baird & Co., West Allis, Wis. The box and the neck tag were produced in Mexico, under arrangements made by Midori's sister company, Allied Domecq. Mexico City-based Pavisa Group produced the bottle. Labels were printed by Fleming Potter, Peoria, Ill.The promotion targets Midori's core markets in California, Florida and select cities in the South and East. "We didn't produce a ton of cases because we just wanted to test the waters," explains Francis.The idea for the commemorative bottle came up in October 1995, and production began in March. "We were gunning for a summer launch, because that's our big selling period," says Francis. "I'm hoping that we will reorder, but I don't think I'll gear up production until 1997. There are so many things going on with the Christmas rush, we'd be better served if we hold off."

Midori Lounge Lizard is Green Around the Gills

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