How we reintroduced the Bunnahabhain brand with a campaign inspired by the sounds of Islay.
Founded in 1883 on the remote island of Islay, Bunnahabhain is an iconic whisky brand known for showcasing the true natural character of both its peated and unpeated offerings. The Bunnahabhain brand was purchased by Distell in 2014 and is now highly regarded among Islay’s nine distilleries.
The Brief
We worked with the Bunnahabhain team to develop an evolved brand position for their iconic whisky and build a campaign to roll out across all international markets. The key objectives were to grab attention, build brand awareness across both consumers and trade, gain traction, and ultimately drive sales.
5
focus markets
83%
male audience
4
key purchase drivers
Marketing Strategy
Our approach involved evolving and enhancing the brand to pave the way for long-term growth. Before even considering the visual application of the brand within the launch campaign, our marketing team devised a brand execution strategy where we evolved audience insights into actionable personas and mapped out considered customer journeys. From the outset, we created a 12-month roadmap, including quarterly content strategy, planning and measurement.
Ahead of the launch, we created a full content plan for the first three months of activity. Our content production team then built a bank of branded content to create a solid activation plan lead by both creative and strategy.
Creative Direction
The Sound of Islay is a narrow body of water that runs between Jura and Islay on the west coast of Scotland. Our content production team conceptualised and created a hero campaign video that featured ‘The Sound of Islay’ in all its forms—both as a lifeline of water, and the sonic experience of the island. The video samples sounds from the natural environment and Bunnahabhain’s distillation process throughout, and uses slow, spanning shots to immerse the viewer in the beauty of the landscape.
Film Production
Our content production team created two hero films—a brand film and ‘The Sound of Islay.’ They were broken down into shorter edits and tailored for various audiences, mediums and objectives across Bunnahabhain’s marketing channels. They also delivered a number of sister films which captured the tasting notes of each product in their range. This approach extended the longevity and flexibility of the creative, to deliver more from one campaign.
Design
The campaign was brought to life visually by our design and content production teams, who worked closely with our marketing team to develop creative that appealed to target personas and made a real impact.
