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BIVALVE BEVERAGES IN THE NEWS
Why is it consumers clam up when it comes to Clamato?
By Matthew Kauffman
May 18, 2004
If it weren't for the tens of millions of gallons that
people voluntarily consume every year, you'd swear the stuff
was a "Saturday Night Live" joke: a bottled drink that
combines tomatoes and spices "and a great clam taste."
Clams. Now that's refreshment!
Welcome to the improbable world of Clamato, which
stands alone in the supremely narrow "seafood blends"
beverage category.
Clamato has been around 35 years and it has shelf space in
virtually every supermarket in America. Despite its
ubiquity, Clamato has not caught on with the nation's vast
Anglo market, although it has long been a popular choice
among U.S. Hispanics.
And therein lies a thorny challenge for Clamato's maker,
Stamford, Conn.-based Mott's Inc.
Clamato plays a distant second to V8 in the "red juice"
category, but it's eager to gain market share. To get there,
should Mott's try to knock down what it dryly calls "the
clam barrier" and go after the 98 percent of Anglo consumers
who snub the product?
Or should the company devote its marketing resources to
expanding its hold on the core Hispanic market, which,
although smaller, has shown its affinity for Clamato?
Seven years ago, marketers at Mott's made their choice. And
they chose wrong.
Clamato's brand managers never had a clear sense of why
there is such a strong ethnic split on Clamato, and they
tend to play down one widely rumored explanation: Clamato's
underground reputation as an aphrodisiac in some Hispanic
communities.
"That could play a role," said Georg Rasinski, Clamato's
senior brand manager. "But I think it's the taste profile in
general, and then being based on tomatoes. I mean, for
Mexicans, tomatoes are just part of their diet.
"I think it's the seafood/tomato combination," he continues.
"Have you had ceviche? The seafood cocktail? That's a little
bit where this product plays
in. You see it all along the beaches. People drink it a lot
in Acapulco. It's just part of the palate of the
Latino, I think."
But if that completely explained Clamato's appeal, then the
product ought to do equally well with Italians, who know a
thing or two about combining tomatoes and seafood.
Whatever the reason for the Anglo clam barrier, Mott's
figured in 1997 that if skeptical U.S. consumers would just
try Clamato, they'd be hooked. So the company adopted a light-
hearted campaign, with the ill-conceived tagline: "Great
Taste. 99.9 percent Clam-Free."
But consumers, of course, weren't turned off by Clamato
because it had too much clamminess. The psychological
barrier was that it contained clam juice at all. Telling
Anglo consumers that Clamato didn't have all that much of
the ingredient that grossed them out was no way to move the
merchandise.
And by trying to minimize the clam content, Mott's focus on
fish might have only bolstered the barrier.
"When you look at it now," Rasinski says candidly of the $14
million campaign, "you wonder why we did that."
Saying adios to market
But the company learned from its missteps, and in 2000,
Mott's said "adios" to the general market, dumped its big ad
agency in favor of a small Latino shop and developed Spanish-
language ads for television, radio and billboards in key
Hispanic markets around the country.
It worked, boosting sales by hundreds of thousands of cases
and winning accolades for its architect, marketing director
Omar Garcia, who developed advertising campaigns positioning
Clamato as a fun social-occasion drink.
He also built a small cadre of field marketing managers who
still work directly with small grocers in Hispanic markets,
arranging in-store promotions as well as samplings at mass
events in the community.
Mott's also has extended the line in the last two years,
developing Clamato Campestre, with roasted garlic, cilantro
and Worcestershire sauce; and more recently, Clamato
Energia, which competes in the popular energy drink category
led by Red Bull.
Rasinski has followed Garcia's lead, and last week he
launched a new Spanish-language ad campaign with the tagline
"Anima tu Dia" ("Liven up your day"😉 to position Clamato as
an "any time" drink.
Today, although Clamato has just 6 percent of the "red
juice" category, it has a 27 percent share among Hispanic
consumers in the United States, and that number has grown
nearly 20 percent in the last four years.
Breaking through the barrier
But Mott's is still haunted by the clam barrier, and there
ought to be some way to break through it. While Clamato is
strong in Mexico and parts of Central America, it is also a
huge seller in Canada, thanks to a twist of fate decades
ago. Shortly before Clamato was developed, bartender Walter
Chell was asked to invent a drink to celebrate the opening
of a restaurant. He came up with a concoction that combined
Vodka, tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce and mashed clams,
with a celery stick garnish.
It's called the Bloody Caesar. And while it has been
described derisively (on this side of the border) as the
illegitimate offspring of a Bloody Mary and Manhattan Clam
Chowder, it is essentially the National Cocktail of Canada,
with 250 million mixed every year, in a population barely
one-tenth that of the United States. Clam barrier? What
clam barrier?
Mott's tried to export the Bloody Caesar to the United
States a few years ago, but the effort fizzled. Still,
Garcia hasn't given up on the non-Hispanic U.S. market, and
he's mindful that in food, as in dance and music, U.S.
Anglos have been warming to Latin culture in recent years.
Clamato, he said, one day might try to ride that wave to
finally break through.
"I have this idea in the back of my mind: OK, Latin is cool.
When are we going to take advantage of that?" he said. "At
this point in time, we still feel like there's sufficient
growth in the Latino market. But that could be one of the
angles to go after the general market."
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