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Gavin D. Smith
Morrison Bowmore Distillers Ltd offered interesting opportunities to study this activity, partly because the company is widely associated with innovative advertising relating to its Bowmore single malt brand, and partly because much of its design work is generated ‘in house’, rather than being handled by external agencies. Morrison Bowmore is a subsidiary of the Japanese distilling giant Suntory, and owns three Scottish distilleries, namely Bowmore on Islay, Auchentoshan near Glasgow, and Glen Garioch in Aberdeenshire. Bowmore, in its various expressions, from unaged ‘Legend’ to 40 years old, makes up half the total of cased goods sold by the company. The firm’s headquarters is in the Glasgow district of Springburn, and is based around a former Metal box factory, which has been its home since 1986. Here blending, bottling and packaging operations take place, along with all the company’s design, marketing, management and administrative functions. Sales and Marketing Director for Morrison Bowmore is Kenneth MacKay, who agreed to explore some aspects of whisky marketing with us. “Is Scotch malt whisky distilling a cottage industry or a global, luxury goods business”, he muses. “Certain single malts sell increasingly in markets around the globe not only on the basis of how they were made and consumers in these markets will not have a great deal of appreciation of what happens in the distilleries, in the communities where whisky is produced”. MacKay notes that because whisky requires time to mature once distilled “there is a finite amount of stock at any one point. You can’t just suddenly have more of it, so from a marketing point of view, you need to be more strategic than in almost any other industry. Only the nuclear industry has similar timescales!” Regarding the marketing of Bowmore, he points out that “you should always remember that what we have here is a niche segment within a niche segment. In a marketing sense whisky can fulfil practical needs and ‘emotional’ needs. In terms of marketing theory a bottle of an Own label blend might fulfil the ‘functional’ need—to have a drink of alcohol, but a 1964 Bowmore, for example, might also fulfil a wide spectrum of ‘emotional’ needs – it’s not just a drink anymore”. “The typical single malt consumer doesn’t exist”, he claims. “You might divide the single malt consumer into a number of categories, for example the expert/enthusiast, the collector, the loyalist, the gift-giver, the bon viveur and the luxury goods consumer. “The expert/enthusiast is probably the most ‘promiscuous’ of the consumers; to remain an expert he needs to try everything. The collector may be competitive; he may want more expressions of whiskies than fellow collectors, or be interested in whiskies as an investment. The loyalist will be loyal to a brand or distillery and he could be from any level of society. The luxury goods consumer will also be interested in other prestige brands: Bentley, Beluga and Bowmore! Of course, he may also be an expert/enthusiast! There are cross-overs between the different categories and certain categories are more important in certain markets than others. “Getting consumer loyalty within each of the categories provides different challenges for us, and there is probably more intuition required in single malt marketing than with most other products. At the end of the day, consumers themselves are your best brand ambassadors. “We are currently in our fifth year of serious UK consumer advertising”, notes MacKay, “and we are no longer advertising specific Bowmore expressions. Our Bowmore consumers are mostly busy, stressed, urban-based people who may live in quite threatening environments. At an emotional level Bowmore offers a rural, timeless, hand-made, slower-paced alternative to their lives. We would like them to feel that they have escaped to a better place with Bowmore”. When the first Bowmore promotional campaign was inaugurated, the initial images included an eye-catching, bare-breasted sea maiden, far removed from the traditional iconography of Scottish soldiers and mist-shrouded lochs and bens used to sell whisky. MacKay explains, “It was designed to grab attention. We needed something to get our heads above the parapet quickly, as the UK market for single malts was maturing rapidly and we needed to become a major player in a short space of time. It had to be memorable, so we decided to make it very different. The Bowmore name was largely unknown at the time, and the creative focus had to be on a simple, strong message which was upmarket and authentic”. The adverts played on the mystical aspects of Islay, and used the strapline ‘smoke on the water’—a clever phrase designed to appeal to the age group who would readily associate it with the Deep Purple rock anthem of 1972, composed after the group watched the casino in Montreux burn down while recording in Switzerland. Morrison Bowmore went on to produce a series of ‘legends’ advertisements. Each one focused on a piece of lore local to Islay, and despite cynical suggestions that they were surely made up over a dram or two of the product, MacKay insists that they were all authentic Hebridean legends.
The initial advertising campaign was the work of Edinburgh agency Citigate -SMARTS, with whom Morrison Bowmore Distillers Ltd still continue to be associated. Unusually for the whisky industry, much of the material is now generated ‘in house’, however, by Iain Gardiner. He produces images for advertising, packaging and promotional purposes, adapting and augmenting the basic elements originally established with Citigate-SMARTS. “Continuity of execution can be very efficiently and cost-effectively done ‘in house’ ”, says Kenneth MacKay.
The company is clearly doing something right, as Bowmore has now moved up to occupy the number four position in terms of overall volume sales for single malt in Scotland, having previously held a market position outside the top dozen. 120,000 cases of Bowmore are sold globally per annum, 26,000 cases of which are consumed in the UK. Thirty per cent of all Bowmore sold is ‘Legend’, which carries no age statement, 30 per cent is 12 year old, and the remaining 40 per cent is made up of all the other expressions. In terms of UK advertising spend, Morrison Bowmore ranks third among Scotch whisky companies after Glenmorangie and Glenfiddich. The smart advertising only works, of course, if the product is on the shelves and bar gantries when the potential customer wants to buy it. Supermarkets are one important sales outlet, as are specialist retailers like Loch Fyne Whiskies, while the ‘on-trade’—or licensed premises—makes up the third segment of the domestic market. Steve Webb is Managing Director of Fiore Brands, a joint venture between Morrison Bowmore and Campari, which since June of this year has been ensuring that the firm’s products are in place ready to be sampled by drinkers who have bought into the advertising. The on-trade accounts for some 18 per cent by volume for the Scotch whisky industry overall, a figure which has not altered much during the last decade. Fiore is keen to develop the on-trade, with Webb noting that a bottle of Bowmore in a bar could convert more than twenty potential customers! The place where most people try a new malt whisky for the first time is in a pub or hotel, rather than spending in excess of £20 on a bottle of something they are not sure to like. Inevitably, much of the sales and marketing effort is directed at the various expressions of Bowmore, but what of the company’s other products? Morrison Bowmore owns a number of blended whisky brands, including Rob Roy, which is about to undergo a packaging makeover and global re-launch. The blend competes in international markets with the likes of 100 Pipers and Vat 69, selling particularly well in South America, where between 300,000 and 400,000 cases of Morrison Bowmore’s blended whisky are sold per annum. The re-launched Rob Roy will continue to be marketed in South America, while Spain, Thailand and Taiwan will also be targeted. Of the company’s three single malt brands, Glen Garioch is the lowest-ranking in terms of sales, and as Kenneth MacKay notes, “We couldn’t do Bowmore-style advertising with it—it would be far too expensive. We sell it as an excellent value-for-money Highland malt at 10 year old and upwards, and its presentation uses archetypal Scottish images—tartan and a stag. Although its sales are modest they are growing quickly and it is useful to us because we need a good Highland malt for blending purposes as well as for exchanges with other distillers”. Auchentoshan is that rare creature, a triple-distilled single malt, from one of a handful of surviving Lowland distilleries. It currently sells around 25,000 cases globally per annum, and is a particular favourite in Scandinavian markets. As with Glen Garioch, a ten year old is the principal expression. According to MacKay, “we’re currently trying to position it as The Glasgow Malt —trying to make it the people of Glasgow’s whisky. The distillery is, after all, on their doorstep [at Dalmuir, close to the River Clyde]. It would be wonderful if we could convert five per cent of Glasgow’s blend drinkers to it!” Morrison Bowmore are now sponsoring the Glasgow “Restaurant of the year” award and have established positive links with the city’s Lord Provost’s office. Civic visitors are now offered not a glass of blended whisky but a dram of specially bottled Auchentoshan when they are entertained in the City Chambers. “We’re still at the early stages of marketing the brand”, says MacKay, “but hopefully there are lots of opportunities ahead”. The art—or science—of marketing has certainly come a long way since the days when a distiller felt that all he needed to do in order to sell his whisky was to print Ben, Glen, Loch or Royal on the label… |
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