WHISKY, STRAIGHT

SCOTTISH WHISKY HAS A DISTINCTIVENESS PROBLEM AND A RECRUITMENT PROBLEM.

BOTH ARE MARKETING PROBLEMS.

THIS IS GOOD NEWS, BECAUSE MARKETING PROBLEMS ARE THE KIND THAT CAN BE SOLVED.

Scottish whisky collectively built one of the greatest provenance myths in consumer goods, and then more than 150 distilleries crowded onto the same myth until it no longer belonged to anyone. Meanwhile, the occasions where new drinkers actually start are being captured by bourbon, tequila, Japanese whisky and cans of pre-mixed cocktails.

Everything that follows is written for the person who owns a brand or a marketing budget, not for the trade press. Each section ends with the ‘so what’. The evidence sits behind every claim — over fifty sources, from the SWA and IWSR to peer-reviewed marketing and behavioural science — because a point of view is only worth having if it survives contact with the data. Read on.