Vodka Brand Champion 2017: Deep Eddy

After several years of decline, spurred by a litany of social, economic and political hurdles – combined with changing consumer attitudes and drinking trends – the vodka category is finally showing signs of stability.

The performance of the world’s top two best­-selling vodka brands – Absolut and Smirnoff – stagnated in 2016, but plenty of vodkas celebrated success. Cîroc returned to emphatic double­digit growth, while Żubrówka continued to post solid gains, and some brands that had previously slipped below the one­million­case mark – including Myagkov and Prestige – once again crossed the coveted threshold.

This year’s Brand Champions list has even welcomed completely new million­-case brands, such as Ladoga Group’s Tsarskaya, which experienced an enormous 50% volume growth.

It is one such newcomer to the million-­case club that has been bestowed with this year’s title of Vodka Brand Champion: Texas­made Deep Eddy Vodka.

Since launching in 2010, Deep Eddy has recorded outstanding year­-on-­year volume growth, and last year was no exception, when a 41.8% uplift nudged the brand over 1m case sales.

According to John Scarborough, president of Deep Eddy – which was acquired by US spirits firm Heaven Hill Brands in 2015 – the success of its core expression and thoughtful growth of its flavoured offering contributed to the brand’s landmark achievement in 2016.

“We saw almost 50% growth with the 80 proof expression in 2016 and are focused on building the awareness and the equity of our core offering with consumers as we continue our growth,” he said.

“We also launched our Peach line extension in 2016, building on the foundation of all of our previous offerings that combine real fruit juice with Deep Eddy 80 proof vodka. It surpassed 100,0000 cases in its first year, and is a solid addition to our line-up.”

This year, Deep Eddy will also focus on driving its new Orange flavour, as well as experiential marketing campaign, the ‘Dive in Tour’.

“We expect to see continued growth across all of our product lines, but we are in no hurry,” added Scarborough. “We created Deep Eddy Vodka seven years ago to be a 100­-year brand and have never cut corners for the sake of growth, and we will not start now.

“Building the 80 proof offering will be the key to future growth milestones of two million cases and beyond, and this drives much of our decision making for the brand. We are very excited about 2017.”

See the adjacent column to discover the spirits that sold more than 1m cases last year, as well as The Brand Champions 2017 of each individual category.

Vodka (Figures: million 9l case sales)