REPOSITIONING LUXURY SCOTCH
Envisioning The Future Of Luxury Single Malt In North America
New York, USA
This technology-focused, multi-channel, marketing campaign for a heritage scotch brand proposes blockchain, AI-enabled retail, and cross-industry collaborations aimed towards attracting the modern North American luxury consumers.
All imagery, numerical data & brand names have been changed/excluded as per the NDA to retain the confidentiality of the client
Brief
What can a scotch brand learn from different industries that had to embrace a DTC strategy during last year’s pandemic?
What are the prevalent types of technologies that are emerging in other industries and that you can envision reshaping the experience and experience between brand and consumer?
How can some of these become the leverage for a luxury brand that is still distributed through the traditional wines and spirits network?
An understanding of the market starts with an understanding of the consumer. Based on the brand's goals, target profiles were developed to signal aspirations, and behavioral drivers for their clients that would help further detail the best approach to achieve the campaign goals.
Since the goal of the brand was to reposition itself in a way that will allow the brand to keep its heritage while appealing to a more fashionable, younger consumer, based on the understanding of the new target demographic, it is recommended that the brand move from the Current: (Wabi-sabi + Classic) to the Preferred: (Wabi-sabi + Postmodern
THE THREE STAGE APPROACH: Based on the ideas and technologies researched, a multi-step, phased brand activation strategy was devised to promote the Modern Scotch to the new consumer. EXCITE - EDUCATE - EXPERIENCE: This campaign develops in three stages. Excite, Educate and Experience. For the new post-modern consumers, programs that build excitement for the brand as a disruptive heritage label are envisioned. Leveraging this new interest, clients are further accompanied into the Educate phase where they are immersed in Scottish culture through innovative digital touchpoints. Finally, as the clients evolve into a Wabi-Sabi consumer, multi-sensory experiences for a post pandemic world are proposed.
Blockchain is introduced here as the foundation of creating a trustworthy, and verifiable infrastructure to build the educational campaign on. Blockchain in essence allows users to record and track every stage of the rarified production process, from the sourcing of the raw materials for the brand and the collaboration, through the distillation over decades in Scotland and finally via the distribution and eventual acquisition of the flight and collections in the hands of the consumer. It brings control of content back to the brand while facilitating greater and more transparent communication between the creators and the consumers.