SouthTrade International is celebrating today’s Canada Day festivities with the launch of Seagram’s VO Canadian Whisky, which has been part of Seagram’s Finest Spirits since 1857.

This is the first time the VO brand has been launched in Australia and it will land here with refreshed packaging and more relevant repositioned brand communications.

The Managing Director of SouthTrade, Ray Noble, was once Canadian Club Marketing Director and that he said he is looking forward to exploring the Canadian Whisky category further.

“I have a huge love for Canadian Whisky having been privileged to work on the CC brand for many years as we took it from a bottle gathering dust on the shelf to the hottest ‘beer alternative’ spirit in Australia,” Noble said.

“I am excited to build on this great work by providing consumers and retailers with more options to explore in Canadian Whisky. It cannot be a category of one here forever.

“VO delivers perfectly on the ‘easy drinking’ taste profile and is one of the big three Canadian Whiskies in North America. Under Sazerac it is enjoying double digit growth and we can’t wait to bring this authentic highly credible brand Down Under.”

Seagram's VOSazerac bought the VO brand from Diageo in 2018 and SouthTrade Marketing Director Fraser Lockwood said he is confident the whisky will prove popular with Australian consumers.

“While Canadian Whisky is well known in Australia it’s still heavily underrepresented in comparison to overseas markets,” he said.

“In the US, Canadian Whisky is over 30 per cent share of the total whisky category which is five times what it is here. Australian consumers love the lighter, smoother whisky style that mixes so well with Dry, so we believe there is still plenty of room for this category to grow further.

“We’re confident VO will add real value to the category and provide consumers with a great tasting and credible alternative.”

In terms of the repositioned brand communications, Jon Prew, Marketing Manager of Whisky and Shooters, who is launching the campaign for VO, said: “This is one of SouthTrade’s most significant launches to date so we’ll be backing the badger in all key touchpoints with over $1M committed across the off-premise, on-premise and socials to build scale visibility and awareness of the VO brand.

“We believe we’ve cracked a unique brand position that creates a super simple ritual and call to action – Give it a V.O.”

Seagram’s will be available across Australia from the end of July, contact your SouthTrade BDE for more information.

Andy Young

Andy joined Intermedia as Editor of The Shout in 2015, writing news on a daily basis and also writing features for National Liquor News. Now Managing Editor of both The Shout and Bars and Clubs.

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