DALMI-HAM-F2016-01

Effects of Absolut Vodka Collaboration on Popularity of Artists

by Eliana Lauder, Christopher Taylor, Thomas Risinger, Daniel Jones & Reid Quigley (2016)

Abstract:

Beginning in 1986 with world-renowned artist Andy Warhol, Absolut Vodka began their campaign to maintain their contemporary brand through collaborations with numerous professional artists. These pieces of art all feature the iconic Absolut Vodka bottle within the style of these artists. For the purpose of this study, we chose five artists: George Rodrigue, Chris Ofili, Kenny Scharf, Bertil Vallien, and Leroy Nieman. From ArtNet we collected data on sales of each of these artists work from a period of time five years prior and fifteen years after their collaboration with Absolut. We used this data to study various trends and patterns in effort to discover whether the collaboration had an overall positive or negative effect on the popularity of each artist. For each of these artists we identified a symbol or motif that was present in their collaboration as well as in their other works. These symbols helped us track more directly how impactful the collaboration was by studying the popularity post collaboration of works with the same symbol. Taking into account the fact that there are numerous confounding variables affecting popularity, we found was that artists who used an easily recognizable, concrete symbol, like George Rodrigue and Chris Ofili, rather than a general theme, like Kenny Scharf, Bertil Vallien, and LeRoy Nieman, benefitted significantly from the collaboration. On the other hand, we did not see much of an effect on the popularity of artists who did not use an obvious symbol in their work with Absolut.

Keywords 
Absolut Vodka, Commercial artists, Characteristics

JEL Classification:
Z1