0% Alcohol Vodka Receives Surprising Reaction from New York Public

To accompany the launching of their film “VODKA ROCKS!,” production company SkuFlix created a mock “0% Alcohol Vodka” product to give to consumers on the street. The fact that their fake product was so well received by the public was not the

New York City (I-Newswire) October 19, 2012 - SkuFlix’s new film, “VODKA ROCKS!”, is a satirical action comedy that explores themes of consumerism, marketing and materialism. In order to promote the film, which is now available to watch online, the SkuFlix team decided to try their own experiment in marketing and materialism. The idea was to create a fake “0% Alcohol Vodka”, a product that most people would consider functionally useless, and garner people’s curiosity in the product. After looking for the product online, they would be lead to the “VODKA ROCKS!” website and introduced to the film. The results of the experiment, however, were much more interesting than the team originally anticipated.

Video of product launch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9ajZRjfcq8&feature=plcp

The first step in this experiment was coming up with a product that would be convincing enough for people to believe in. SkuFlix’s mock vodka product, which was named “VODKA ROCKS!” after the title of their film, needed to have a compelling reason for its existence. “Let’s be honest- people don’t drink vodka because they’re looking for a delicious beverage to quench their thirst.” says SkuFlix producer Arabella Hutter. “ We wanted to experiment with selling a product lacking the very ingredient which appeals to people by the power of branding. We were shocked by the results.” A sells pitch was put together by the Vodka Rocks! team: 0% vodka will help the consumer preserve one’s social persona and status. Pregnant women, recovering alcoholics, underage teens, people on medication, and those who do not drink for religious reasons, instead of claiming their difference, can pretend to drink liquor in order to fit in.


Armed with a sellspitch for the product, the VODKA ROCKS! team was aware that branding and labeling, one of the major themes of the film itself, is perhaps the most important part in advertising. The appearance of a product is, in the end, what really sells it. The VODKA ROCKS! product itself was simple enough to create: some bottled water with a little additional ginger and citrus flavoring. But after printing out a professional-looking label and slapping it on a fancy-looking bottle, complete with a silver tray, plastic shot glasses and labeled napkins, the VODKA ROCKS! team was ready to take their product to the streets of Williamsburg, NYC.

While curiosity and perhaps even some mockery of the product were expected, the VODKA ROCKS! team was astonished by the willingness of consumers to ingest this mystery product, and by the number of people claiming to enjoy it, some even asking when the product would be available in stores. While some people expressed that the product tasted similar to water, nobody questioned or doubted whether or not what they were drinking was a legitimate product.

This raised some questions, and even some concerns amongst the VODKA ROCKS! team. How much does a brand name and label really affect people’s level of trust? Because the bottles were labeled and the servers wore tee-shirts with the same logo, people were willing to put 100% of their trust into this unknown product being offered to them on the street by strangers. What if an individual were to print out some tee shirts and bottle labels and go around the streets of New York serving poison- how many people could be harmed due to the power of branding?

Now, the VODKA ROCKS! team wants to put this trust in branding to the test. Their next experiment is to find out what will happen if they take one of their same actors, with the same product, and send them back into the same streets without the labeled bottle and branded shirt. Will people be less likely to accept a drink from a plainly dressed man with an unmarked bottle than they would be from a brand they had never heard of? Why is it that people will put so much of their trust into a simple picture or label? These are questions that the VODKA ROCKS! team hopes to explore in their next marketing experiment.