Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/49694
Cashing In On The Legacy Bootlegging made gangsters rich. Canadian Club is now cash- ing in on its bootlegging legacy, highlighting its rowdy association with the Roaring '20s. The brand is also staking its claim to some of the popular terms that sprang up during that time. Speakeasy: Chicago gangster Al Capone would come to the company's headquarters himself to negotiate the deals for booze. To keep him out of the earshot of company employees, the principals would go downstairs to company founder Hiram Walker's wine cellar, which had been converted to a clandestine meeting room. Once down there, they'd "speak easy" about the arrangements. Bootlegging: Traditional bottles of Canadian Club, with their long, graceful necks, were ill-suited to the rigors of rough passage on choppy seas or bumping back roads, as was necessary during Prohibition. So the firm changed the shape of its bottle in 1924, thickening the glass and shortening the neck to prevent breakage. It also made the bottles slightly concave, which made them easier to conceal in a jacket pocket or to shove under a pant leg and into a boot. lobbied the U.S. government to require the nation of origin to be included on bottle labels. They thought that a non-native liquor would be spurned by a loyal American public. Instead of trying to hide behind small type on the back of the bottle, Walker went the opposite way. He used a big bold script to announce his Canadian Club whisky. And rather than turn their backs, Americans embraced the status that came with drinking an imported liquor. "He was a visionary," Tullio says of Walker. The campaign looks like a winner. Canadian Club volume in the United States is up 3.2 percent in the past 12 months, revenue 4.7 percent, which means the company has successfully executed a price increase in an eco- nomic downturn. Of course, the brand isn't quite matching the profit margins achieved by Al Capone and his cronies in the 1920s, but it doesn't have to worry about submachine guns under the table, either. The real McCoy: There are conflicting claims to the origins of this and the other terms here, but there's no disputing the fact that Bill McCoy was an employee of Canadian Club. McCoy was one of the more prominent smugglers of the time, and after his rum-running days in the Caribbean, he became the dock manager for CC. Because there was so much counterfeit liquor around, it was said that if you wanted the genuine article, you went to see Bill, who would give you "the real McCoy." december 201 1 / the tasting panel / 83