In the 1970s, the legendary advertising man Gunnar Broman found an old pharmacy bottle in an antique shop in Gamla Stan. That was the starting point for one of Sweden's most successful marketing stories, the tale of how Absolut Vodka became an international export phenomenon. It all began with that bottle.

The bottle was designed like an old-fashioned advertisement, where the name served as the headline and the label's text told the story of the Swedish schnapps directly on the glass. In the spring of 1979, Absolut Vodka was launched at a fair in New Orleans. It was the beginning of a campaign that would prove both creative and groundbreaking, blurring the line between advertising and art to some extent.

In the exhibition “Absolut Absolut. A Spectacular Advertising Story,” now showing at the Spritmuseum, about 90 different bottles and 130 selected advertisements have been collected. In total, over 1,500 ads were created over the years. Much of the material in the exhibition is usually held in The Absolut Company's historical archives at the Centre for Business History. Visitors also get to experience works by, among others, Andy Warhol, Tom Ford, Vivienne Westwood, Swedish House Mafia, and Annie Leibovitz, from the foundation behind the Spritmuseum's collections.

One who knows Absolut Vodka's history well is Bartosz Petryk, archivist at the Centre for Business History. For “Absolut Absolut,” he has assisted The Absolut Company and Spritmuseum with research as well as the preparation of archival documents and objects. “After many years of working with the Absolut archives, in all their various forms, it is both welcome and interesting that the Spritmuseum's exhibition gives the material a fine presentation and enlightening framing,” says Bartosz.