“Advertising is based on one thing - happiness.” Of all the great lines delivered by Don Draper in TV’s Mad Men this is the one that has cut through the most with advertising executives and brands owners the world over.
But however much they might be inspired by it, how many actual brands in the last 20 years have gone on to achieve so-called “happiness” in what they are selling.
Or as Don Draper says: "The greatest thing you have working for you is not the photo you take, it's the imagination of the consumer...if you can get into that space your ad can run all day."
Take a look at Interbrand’s biggest Best Global Brands for 2025 and it is dominated not by actual products you can pick up off a shelf, but by businesses that give us services and platforms designed to give us the power to "imagine" by what they allow us to do.
A top 20 that includes the likes of Apple (1), Microsoft (2), Amazon (3), Google (4), Instagram (8), Cisco (11), YouTube (13), Oracle (16), Facebook (19) and Abode (20).
It won’t be long before the likes of Chat GPT, Grok and other AI platforms are knocking even more household brands out of similar polls.
It’s not as if we have all fallen totally out of love with the brands and products we buy every week in the local supermarket, it’s just more often than not we are buying them out of habit rather than any deep affection or, crucially, emotional connection with what that brand has to offer.
It’s why so much supermarket space is now given over to own label products as the big retail chains have realised their own brand power and what they mean to their customers is now far more significant than the majority of brands they are selling.
It’s all a far cry from when big grocery brands were in their pomp in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, made famous by brilliant, funny, memorable advertising that helped make them the household names they are still today.
Big, bold and most of all cheeky advertising that gave brands their personality, their cut through, their appeal. They made us feel good. They even made us happy.
The days when beer advertising was at its best and each brand’s campaign was designed to put a smile on our face. Be it Holsten's "Sugar Turns to alcohol productions," Hofmeister’s George the Bear or Carling’s “I bet he drinks Black Label” campaigns.
Sadly TV and brand advertising has withdrawn ever more into its shell, hampered by restrictive rules and regulations about what they can say or do. The direct, unique emotional connection that brands have with their target consumer has been lost.
Arguably the drinks industry has been one of the hardest hit with ever more focus given to bland, “responsible” advertising that ticks all the legal and regulatory boxes, but has resulted in so many faceless brands on our shelves, and in our bars, that have no personality at all.
Backed by big drinks giants increasingly hampered by corporate constipation and an obsession with keeping their shareholders rather than their all important customers happy.
No wonder people are drinking less. There is very little to excite or make us want to drink more.
Star power
All of which has left a vacuum that household names of another kind have stepped into it.
Now celebrities and brands have long been natural bedfellows. From Barry White in his bath of Radox, to Henry Cooper splashing the Brut, to Peter Kay's classic John Smith sketches.
The difference now is our biggest stars are not just endorsing brands they are going out and producing their own.
What’s more they are doing it in such a high level and professional way they are leaving traditional brands and their owners in their wake.
The biggest names don’t just see these products as nice things to have to keep them busy in between tours, films and their next album, but an integral part of their overall “brand” and what they stand for.
They are launching and managing these brands with as much professional care and attention to detail as they do all other aspects of their career - and making sure they are working with the best and most connected people in the industry to do so.
Take Kylie. And now Elton John. They would not have both got mainstream listings at the likes of Tesco and Sainsbury’s off their own bat. It’s a combination of their star appeal and the hard wired connections of Paul Schaafsma and his Benchmark Drinks business that is the wine industry’s power behind their thrones.
It was thanks to Schaafsma’s decades of experience - gleaned at Australian Vintage and Accolade Wines - of knowing how to sell major wine brands into the big supermarkets - and who to sell them to - that got the likes of Tesco to pick up his call and listen to what a Kylie Minogue wine might bring to their business.
Kylie Minogue, Paul Schaasma and Benchmark Drinks have together taken the wine categy by storm and shown what star power can achieve when they are fully committed to maximising their own brand's appeal
Kylie with her number one best selling non-alcoholic sparkling rosé wine
The result has been quite phenomenal. Kylie - with Benchmark Drinks pulling the strings - now has the UK’s biggest selling rosé Prosecco and number one 0% sparkling rosé in UK grocery retail and has sold close to 22 million bottles around the world in just five years.
Star focus
But Kylie is not just selling a Prosecco rosé. She is selling herself. In the same way you might go to a Kylie concert, or download her latest single. You are buying into what Kylie is about. Which ultimately is about making you happy. She puts a smile on your face. Every bottle someone picks off the shelf is an endorsement for her and what she means to the person buying it.
She also knows how to do business. How to make the most of brand Kylie. It means, says Schaasfma, that her "attention to detail is off the charts" day in day out. Right down to visiting and working with her producer partners, helping with the blend of the wines through to the the size of the dimple on every Prosecco bottle with her name on it.
As she says: "I absolutely do not think the success of Kylie Minogue wines is because of my name. It was essential that the quality was in the bottle. That was the beginning of the story. Quality, quality, quality is paramount."
Kylie at her party last May to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Kylie Minogue Wines performing "Edge of Saturday Night" with DJ The Blessed Madonna
She told wine industry guests at her party last May, to celebrate the brand's fifth anniversary, that Kylie Minogue Wines had "started with a genuine and heartfelt good idea" but the difference has been how, together with Benchmark Drinks, they have "consistently put everything they could into the brand" and worked directly with who she calls their "conduit" partners in the trade to reach the consumer.
She is also committed to putting in the hard work herself. Want to sell more Kylie wines into the US? Then she’s prepared to go state by state across the country to visit local distributors to do so. How many brand owners do that these days?
Kylie even went to meet and talk to potential distributors and customers at ProWein in 2023 and had her own Kylie Minogue stand at the show and is now set to be at Wine Paris in February.
Talk to her about her wine and she is more interested in what you have to say and how you think she can make her wine brand better - I can’t think of any wine producer who has ever asked me that.
She knew she was a newcomer in an industry she knew little about and was willing to watch, listen, and then act with a laser like precision based on her decades of experience in the music industry to know how powerful her “brand” can work when pushed in the right direction.
Her amazing success in wine has no doubt now brought Elton John to the table and the launch this week - also with Benchmark Drinks - of his own “Zero Blanc de Blanc” sparkling wine, that has quickly gone straight into the grocery charts with a national listing at Sainsbury’s - with no doubt others to follow in due course.
As a long time teetollaer Elton John says he wanted produce a qualty zero alohol drink he could drink at parties
A wine that John says is all about “bringing joy and celebration to the world of 0%”. A wine that’s “built on the belief that time spent together should feel good” and that can “bring a touch of sparkle to every occasion”.
He’s all about spreading a bit of happiness too - and has been all over social media to personally promote it to his millions of loyal fans.
Which brings us back to those Mad Men and Don Draper and his mantra of looking to create brands that “consumers feel something for” - a “place where we know we are loved”.
The days when we could rely on Coca-Cola or Heinz to do that are long gone. But for Elton, Kylie and co they are only just beginning…
