A Tricky Game of Tipple Toppling
Ardbeg Blasda Single Malt Whisky
Issue 13 | December 2009
Agency
Story, Edinburgh
Creative Team
Creative Director : Dave Mullen, Head of Copy : Rebecca Wood, Copywriter : Olivia Jones
Production Team
Photographer : David Boni
Other Credits
Laetitia Drexler, Jenny Emslie, Graham Robb, Sheila Gallagher
Date
2009
Background
Ardbeg is a heavily peated single malt whisky, produced on the small Scottish island of Islay.
Peatiness is a huge part of its appeal and the brand’s reputation has been built on it.
The Distillery took a gamble when it softened the peat in a new batch of Ardbeg.
They called the whisky it made 'Blasda', meaning sweet and delicious in Gaelic.
The new whisky managed to retain perfect balance but with less of a peaty punch than Ardbeg devotees might expect. The challenge was to get these ‘peat-freaks’ to accept it.
Idea
The campaign began with a long, long email. As you scrolled down, you saw a long, long, jenga-like tower of peat briquettes.
The question was: How much peat can you remove from Ardbeg before it loses its perfect balance?
Clicking through to www.ardbeg.com/blasda allowed recipients to play the game, send to a friend and crucially buy a bottle.
Tipple toppling involved removing blocks of peat from the stack, encouraged by two distillery workers, who would already be known to the recipients through previous Ardbeg communications.
At the heart of both the product and the campaign was the truth that of all the Islay malts, Ardbeg ‘owns’ peatiness. In true Ardbeg maverick style, peatiness was at the centre of a campaign for a product where the peat was almost absent.
From the game, viewers could 'dig a bit deeper' to discover more in the online book and then click through to buy a bottle.
Results
Both the campaign and the whisky were so well received, Blasda has been rolled out worldwide. 24,834 bottles have been sold from the first release of 36,450.
36.5% of recipients opened the email against an industry average of 24%.
Monthly web traffic increased from 38,571 visitors to 61,808, 160% uplift
Site visits increased from 1400 to 6500 – 464% uplift in one day and 502 newcomers signed up to the CRM programme.
Our Thoughts
In her comments about this year’s UK DMA Awards, Caitlin Ryan write that she is always impressed by the ‘indie’ feel to all Ardbeg communications. I know what she means. Story have fashioned a very distinctive personality for the brand which its loyalists both love and identify with.
As well as this nifty wee idea of a game, not gratuitous as so many games are but essential to the delivery of the product message, we also wanted to feature Story’s ‘Corryvreckan – the sea-quel’ for Ardbeg’s Corryvreckan single malt. It’s a B-Movie in which you can play a starring role. But we ran out of pages. However, go to www.ardbeg.com/twist and see what they’ve done for yourself.