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A marketing strategy that could be crudely summarised as "hope for a hot summer" had served The Ice Co perfectly well for decades. But in a market with informed and discerning consumers, sitting back and relying on a nationwide distribution strategy that got identical 2kg bags containing identical cubes in front of more shoppers than anyone else in the market was not going to be enough.
一种可以粗略概括为“炎热夏天的希望”的营销策略几十年来一直很适合The Ice Co。但是，在一个消费者信息灵通、眼光敏锐的市场上，仅仅依靠全国范围内的分销策略——将装着相同方块的2公斤袋装冰块送到市场上更多的顾客面前——是不够的。
Keeping tabs on what the market wants isn't always a hardship for The Ice Co, as Polly Metcalfe admitted: "We're quite a young group – we all enjoy drinking." The enjoyment of an occasional drink – and the ice within it – flows through the culture of The Ice Co. Unlimited free ice is a perk granted to all employees, a reminder that abundant ice is the best kind of ice. Employees have been known to quiz bartenders on where they get their ice ("none of us have pulled this way", admitted Ginny Woolhouse, the company's head of marketing). It is not unusual for team members on holiday to send photos of their drinks to the group WhatsApp, soliciting feedback on ice purity, quality, size.
对The Ice Co来说掌握市场的需求并不总是一件难事，正如波莉·梅特卡夫所承认的那样：“我们是一个相当年轻的群体——我们都喜欢喝酒。”偶尔喝一杯酒的乐趣——还有里面的冰块——都体现了The Ice Co公司的文化。所有员工都可以享受无限免费冰块的福利，这提醒人们丰富的冰才是最好的冰。众所周知员工会向调酒师询问冰块从哪里来(该公司的营销主管金妮·伍尔豪斯承认：“我们并没有要求员工这样做”)。团队成员常常会在度假时将他们的饮料照片发到WhatsApp群里，征求对冰块纯度、质量、大小的反馈意见。
The ice from most holiday destinations visited by the team in the early 2010s looked more or less like Ice Co ice: domed cylinders, a little jagged at the edges, with a hole at the centre. The ice from Spain, though, was different – "supersized cubes, really premium, like nothing we'd ever seen before", recalled Woolhouse.
2010年代初，团队访问的大多数度假地的冰块看起来或多或少都像Ice Co的冰块：圆筒状，边缘有点锯齿状，中间有个洞。然而，来自西班牙的冰却不同——“超大尺寸的冰块，真的很珍贵，我们从未见过这样的冰块，”伍尔豪斯回忆说。
Mass-market packaged ice (the stuff that goes into Party Ice bags) is formed in supercooled cylinders that are then broken down into smaller chunks; a high-speed, high-yield process that prioritises quantity over quality. But The Ice Co also already possessed a small number of Italian-made Scotsman machines, which worked in a totally different fashion, by spraying water upwards into an inverted mould. In a Scotsman, gravity ensures that any sediment or impurities in the water fall out of the finished cube, resulting in a noticeably superior product. By passing pure spring water into a Scotsman, The Ice Co hoped it could produce a dead ringer for the cubes served in Spain. The result was glassy, massy and dense. They called it the Super Cube.
大众市场上的包装冰(装入“冰之狂欢”袋子里的东西)是在极冷的圆柱体中形成的，然后被分解成更小的块状，一种高速、高产量的加工过程，注重数量而不注重质量。但是The Ice Co公司已经拥有了一小批意大利制造的斯科茨曼机器，它们的工作方式完全不同，将水向上喷射到倒置的模具中。在斯科茨曼机器中，重力可以确保水中的任何沉淀物或杂质从成品立方体中脱落，从而产生明显优越的产品。通过将纯净的泉水注入斯科茨曼机器内，The Ice Co希望能够生产出与西班牙的冰块完全相同的产品，结果造出了呈玻璃状、块头大、密度高的冰块。他们称之为超级立方体。
The Super Cube is aptly named: it is an absolute unit, at least three times larger than a conventional cube. And the ebullient explosion of the Spanish-style gin-tonic, served in a copa glass the size of a goldfish bowl filled to the brim with ice, represented a clear opportunity. The Super Cube was a natural companion to the tsunami of premium gins and tonics hitting the market as a trend became a craze in the 2010s. Today, The Ice Co is the official partner of both The Gin to My Tonic (the UK's largest gin-centric events business, with dozens of festivals in cities across the UK per year) and Craft Gin Club, the UK's No 1 gin subscription service, which sends its 75,000 members a bottle of craft gin plus tonic, garnishes and snacks every month (ice is not included, though the Super Cube's distinctive profile is everywhere on their website).
超级立方体的名字很贴切：它是一个绝对单位，至少比传统的立方体要大三倍。西班牙风格的杜松子酒爆发力十足，盛在金鱼缸大小、满溢冰块的长脚酒杯里，这显然是一个好机会。21世纪10年代，优质杜松子酒和奎宁水风靡市场，成为一种潮流，超级立方体是这股潮流的自然伴生。如今，The Ice Co是The Gin to My Tonic(英国最大的以杜松子酒为中心的活动企业，每年在英国各地的城市举办几十个节日)和克拉夫特杜松子酒俱乐部的官方合作伙伴，克拉夫特杜松子酒俱乐部是英国排名第一的杜松子酒订阅服务，它每个月都会给它的75000名会员送一瓶手工金酒加奎宁水，还有配菜和零食（冰块不包括在内，尽管超级立方体的独特外形在他们的网站上随处可见）。
