GTM: Marketing a legacy luxury whiskey
A former financier, serial entrepreneur, and member of a New York real estate dynasty wanted to build their on-premise account base for a bespoke luxury single malt whiskey previously distilled and sold exclusively to a finite waitlist. The brand’s primary goal was to bring the product to market, establishing confidence, sophistication, and category dominance through in-person sales pitches, staff training, sales and educational materials, one-pagers, email communications, social media, and PR efforts to expand their presence and increase sales.
Challenges
The brand faced several challenges:
- At $1,500 a bottle, the brand began as a small batch “if you know you know” consumer good for the founder’s inner circle, which made it highly desirable, but severely limited the buyer demographic once available at scale.
- Limited visual materials and no foundational messaging
- A lack of strategy regarding on-premise pitching and sales adjustments for different audiences
Approach
I worked directly with the founder and CEO to design and implement comprehensive creative guidelines for brand continuity and implement a robust content strategy. This included:
Brand continuity: Established guidelines for images and copy to be carried into every facet of the brand’s advertising and communications.
Sales focus: Authored a compelling brand narrative and designed a sales deck that worked with the natural flow of the presenter (CEO) in B2B settings. Similar educational materials were created to train service members at on-premise accounts on the product to take the word-of-mouth sales effect to individual consumers B2C.
Digital communications strategy: Devised and executed a social media and email marketing strategy that took the brand from being elusive and exclusive to push it out into the collector’s market, maintaining its cachet while opening up to previously untapped consumer bases.
PR with a punch: Supported efforts to highlight the founder and brand in highly reputable publications such as Vogue, WWD, Town & Country, etc., and developed a book proposal for her product story.
Results
Revenue growth: On-premise carriers grew from inception to over 360 prestigious on-premise accounts and whiskey programs, including establishments like Jean-Georges, Daniel, Cipriani, Le Bilboquet, etc.
Demand generation: Sales growth created demand for new editions at various price points, further expanding the customer base for sustained growth.
Market differentiation: Through this highly stylized comms strategy, the brand carved a place for itself as “the first American Single Malt” and became a leader in the category.
