Drinks Americas Holdings, Ltd. (DKAM)

[sneaky_peaky]

The secret to success comes in many forms when we talk about a particular liquor or liquor brand standing out above the others. We have mentioned numerous times even in DKAM's infancy the similarities to HANS in moving from start up to seasoned sales giant in the marketplace. The energy drink sector is becoming crowded but not as much as the liquor space.

As with most business ventures you hear of "niche market" for many players. It boils down to differentiation as the leading factor to a company rising above all the others in its space. It will be great to have all these iconic brands out there. The differentiation on the surface comes in the celebrity tying his or her name to the product. It says a fan of that celebrity wants to drink their liquor product. However, we have two bridges we have to cross with all of DKAM's products. We need to pick up as many of the current cognac and sparkling vodka drinkers out there. Not just try DRE but make DRE their liquor of choice. We also need to create new cognac and sparkling vodka drinkers that didn't know these were their beverages of choice before now. Awareness creates a want that then fulfills a need.

So we look again to HANS and its Monster Drink line. Less than 10 million in sales rises to 1 billion. Other than creating more and more points of purchase worldwide how do they grow the business? Finding what they do can move mountains with DKAM's success going forward. You have to create Monster drinkers where they didn't exist before. Learning these trends and applying them to DKAM will send sales just that much higher.

So we look to Monster sitting on a shelf in a case in a convenient store. Not much there over anything else that says "Buy me" other than the overwhelming shelf presence. Grey Goose holds the same hook on the liquor front but they go a step further with mega dollars spent on advertising. Then we have Dre's cognac and sparkling vodkas sitting on a shelf where 90% of the people walking in the door of the liquor store don't know they exist. 90% of the people who walk in the door have no idea yet their favorite drink of choice is Dre's cognac or sparkling vodkas. DKAM and Kenny AND THE DISTRIBUTORS need to bridge this gap early and with authority.

The answer is cross promotions.

Monster grabs the vodka crowd as consumers quickly find a new drink of choice is vodka and Monster. For them, any vodka will do. For us, Trump and Monster is a great play. Raspberry Trump Monster is even more appealing. So many possibilities.

Now we have a sparkling vodka that could land us an enormous wave of new drinkers. Everyone will want to try the sparkling vodka because it's a "new thing." Dre Sparkling Vodka and Monster will draw a landslide of new DKAM consumers. But it doesn't have to be just Monster. It's the hook of wildly popular being married with something not so popular.

So you have to take a look around you and see what works. If you have a perfect handle on your demographic, then you have to be ready to give them a taste of something new and different. Let me offer you a situation of how it works and will work for us. A sleepy little tourist town of maybe 2000 people has one weekend a year that draws maybe 20-30K people for an "annual event." Not too much different than several thousand of these that occur all over the country at various times of the year. I'm sitting in the middle of it right now so I can speak to what I'm witnessing. Everywhere you go in "the business district" are the black and green "M" signs for Monster. Four main bars are offering "Monster Bombs." The local distributor hooked up with Jagermeister and took the popular Jager Bomb to a new level by mixing it with 1/3 regular Monster. Even an outside serving trailer with a band on a block party serving nothing but Monster Bombs at $5 a clip. Banners, promotion, a block party, and you have instant new fans of Monster.

So we go back to my original idea of cross promoting Dre's CD with his vodkas and cognac. Several million people are begging for his CD. DKAM and Kenny simply must put the CD with the liquor offering. Awareness comes instantly in knowing Dre has a new liquor offering to go with his music. Beyond that, we need more. We need to create MORE sparkling vodka and cognac drinkers. This is where the cross promotion from the liquors comes in. Sparkling vodka and Monster works. Cognac ABC's [Amaretto(DiSaronno), Baileys, and Dre Cognac] and Belfast Bomber's (Baileys and Cognac) work in a cross promotion with Baileys or DiSaronno and Dre's cognac. Cognac and Grand Marnier is also very popular.

Then we can take what we learned from Trump and take it a step further. We had a large amount of Trump Vodka parties with celebrities in the initial launch. But they were "elite" type parties that drew the names but not the numbers.

We have the Google hits to show the interest. We have the market that needs to be bridged to bring the 200 mil bottle per year sparkling vodka and cognac market to Dre's products. We have the audience in about every town in the country, if not Europe, and Asia. The answer for us now lies in tying it all together with management and our distributors. Interscope has those 30 marketing people all looking for the right hook. Interscope comes in and brings us the cross promotional point of purchase sales banners and posters. Kenny can hook us up with the cross promotional liquor offerings. The distributors then MUST take it to the people.

From there, the rest takes care of itself.

You ready?