FROM SKAL
TO SANTÉ

Helping a Scotch whisky deliver 16.5 million impressions on French soil.

When Highland Park Single Malt Scotch Whisky identified France as a key market for growth, we were engaged to create a 12-month paid social plan that would grow brand awareness, increase the number of French followers on Highland Park’s social channel, and drive engagement with the French market.

Our target audience was French whisky lovers: from people who enjoyed an occasional tipple, to those who lived and breathed whisky, but weren’t yet Highland Park converts. Through our discovery phase, we identified that based on Highland Park’s active audience, our focus was men 35-50, who were interested in technology and had already shown an interest in similar single malt whisky brands.

With 3 campaign objectives at play, our strategy was to create various campaigns throughout the year, celebrating the different elements of the Highland Park brand and using these to hit our objectives. We put the majority of the focus on brand awareness: to reach as many of our target audience as possible and also portioned a small amount to engage current audiences.

In a collaborative effort between our paid, content, and design team, the content strategy focused on three key pillars: "Product, serve, and occasions". This allowed us to create campaigns that resonated with different audiences and interests but always had Highland Park at the core. The creative explored innovative ways to tell the tasting, notes, striking product imagery in Orkney for the origin story, and mouthwatering cocktail photography.

We continually analysed our findings to test and learn: considering what platforms worked best; the content style that worked best; and the age range and locations that engaged the most. This was used to make continual learnings and adapt our campaign messaging, creative and targeting to reach those most relevant.

The initial campaign budget delivered over 4 million impressions and 162k engagements, with additional investment given due to the success of the campaign. By the end of the campaign, we delivered 16.5m impressions, 750k engagements, and 25k Highland Park’s website and retail partner page clicks. We also helped deliver France’s most successful year in Highland Park sales.