In yet another show of how the established brand relies on its past to come into the future, it discovered a new way to purify vodka for its Elit line. “We all know that it’s cold in Russia, and to free the vodka of impurities, Russians used to put it into buckets and take it outside. We tried to replicate that process in an industrial setting and came up with a patented freezer-filtration system that cools our vodka to zero degrees Fahrenheit. While it doesn’t freeze, the process allows us to create clearer, smoother vodka, and that’s an expensive process,” he explains.

But SPI is not afraid to keep spending money on product development and marketing. Some of its more lavish spending centered on the August introduction of Gala Applik, with its tagline "Forbidden Fruit No Longer" and a 14-city Moskova Affair tour stretching from Boston to Los Angeles.

Also new this year was the brand’s foray into social media with a Facebook page and several other initiatives. Designed to complement an already solid campaign that includes print, TV, digital, and grassroots efforts, "enlisting Facebook was a no-brainer,” says Pfenning. “The metropolitan consumer is looking for substance in their lives, and while there’s a lot of style out there, they don’t find a lot of substance. So it was important for us to reach out to the very rich community of Facebook fans who already love the brand,” she says.

While both Pfenning and Skurihkhin declined to break out their ad spending by media, they agree that it’s the multichannel approach that’s making a difference. “The efficacy of our efforts lies in the mix. It’s very difficult to point to one platform and say it’s the most profitable for us. But it’s the very subtle science of spending some money on print, some on social media, some on digital, that makes it all work,” says Skurikhin.

And let’s not forget one of the oldest ways to reach a target audience: We still send out "Stoli Girls" armed with blindfolds to do taste tests at local bars, he adds. “That’s always gotten a great response.”