Case Study: Glenfiddich - Whisky entices younger drinkers

Challenge

Glenfiddich was losing 11 per cent of its customers a year. With a
quarter of its drinkers aged over 65, the challenge was to get younger
people to try the brand and become loyal customers. Glenfiddich needed
to discover how people perceived its brand and to understand its
different customer segments.

Strategy

Glenfiddich first segmented whisky drinkers into two main target
groups.

The first were the Glenfiddich loyalists, who make up about 60 per cent
of the brand's drinkers. The second were "discerning selectors" -
reasonably affluent people in their 40 and 50s, who drink about 10
bottles a year of a range of whiskies. "They may drink Glenfiddich but
prefer another brand so it's about getting them to prefer us. We want to
increase the number of bottles of Glenfiddich they buy from one to two a
year," says Nick Williamson, the senior brand manager at
Glenfiddich.

The key messages were the brand's quality and its range of 10
variants.

Glenfiddich is the only Highland whisky to be bottled at source and use
the same water throughout the process. This is where Presky Maves came
in.

Execution

Presky Maves developed a relationship-marketing programme, tested first
in Scotland. "Scotland houses only nine per cent of the total UK
population but it has a large percentage of whisky drinkers. Yet Scots
were saying 'this is what foreigners drink'," Williamson says.

At this stage, Glenfiddich had no data so Presky Maves ran a competition
to recruit drinkers to a CRM programme. The prize was a £1,000
bottle of whisky and entrants were asked to give their contact details
for further communications and answer four questions: how much do you
drink a week; what brands; what do you drink the most of; which do you
prefer? "If we could get that, we had the basis for a database," says
Stuart Woodrington, creative director at Presky Maves. The data was used
to develop the CRM programme, which uses vouchers and ad hoc
communications to change behaviour and drive loyalty.

- Direct mail: the initial mail pack targeted 5,000 people who bought
more than four bottles of malt whisky a year, according to data sourced
from Experian. People who sign up receive a welcome pack and three
communications a year. There have been four phases of activity so far,
with more planned.

- Inserts: a competition insert appeared in The Herald on Saturday and,
since then, Glenfiddich has also run inserts in The Herald, The Scotsman
and BBC Good Food.

- Online: Glenfiddich ran a competition at scotchwhisky.net.

- POS/sampling: the brand holds monthly Glenfiddich Mix club nights at
Cargo in London's Shoreditch. "It's recruitment activity. We're
targeting guys in their 30s, who used to like raving and who are now
starting to settle down," says Williamson.

Results

The initial insert campaign achieved a 5.6 per cent response rate, while
one of the direct mail cells hit 47 per cent. Overall, the campaign was
almost 50 per cent above target in terms of recruiting frequent
purchasers and the number of measures of Glenfiddich drunk each month
increased by 29 per cent. Thirty per cent of those recruited in the
initial phase were not Glenfiddich drinkers at the time.

Glenfiddich will have 50,000 people on its database by the end of the
year and Williamson expects this to rise to 70,000 next year.
Glenfiddich also recently overtook Glenmorangie to become the UK's most
consumed brand of malt whisky.