Adroit Market Research - Industry Insights

Introduction:

Glenfiddich is known as a Scotch whisky which is single malt and is produced and marketed by William Grant & Sons in the region of Dufftown, Scotland. The meaning of the word Glenfiddich in Scottish language is "valley of the deer". This is also evident in the logo of the company which is a stag.

History about the company

The company was started in 1887 by William Grant. He had an ambition to build its own distillery which was achieved with the help of his nine children and a mason. The story is that in the year of 1886 William Grant of Dufftown left his profile as a manager of Mortlach and started his own startup. With his mere saving h

Introduction:

Glenfiddich is known as a Scotch whisky which is single malt and is produced and marketed by William Grant & Sons in the region of Dufftown, Scotland. The meaning of the word Glenfiddich in Scottish language is "valley of the deer". This is also evident in the logo of the company which is a stag.

History about the company

The company was started in 1887 by William Grant. He had an ambition to build its own distillery which was achieved with the help of his nine children and a mason. The story is that in the year of 1886 William Grant of Dufftown left his profile as a manager of Mortlach and started his own startup. With his mere saving he started off. He built his first distillery near the rivers of Fiddich with help of family. The first make was launched on the Christmas Day in the year of 1887. This was the time when distilleries were falling and later succeeding. The ones that were under the process of being built were being bankrolled by bonders, brokers and blenders.

He was an extremely talented distiller, as soon his whole production was bought by broker William and Aberdeen blende. In just 25 years the whole family grew and has around international 63 agencies, making them a family blend called as ‘Grant’s Standfast’.

At present, the 5th generation is responsible for the family business and is expanding the business rapidly. They have 3 more malt distilleries named Kininvie, Balvenie and Ailsa bay, a grain plant and various brands like Monkey Shoulder and Hendricks Gin.

In the year of 1963 there was an argument about the supply of grain. The company decided to bottle and indorse Glenfiddich as a single malt. It was the first time a dedicated effort to build a brand was taken. In the late 1960’s the company was the first to market its products across duty free outlets and later in 1969 distillery’s was opened to public. This was also another first that came from the company.

At present, Glenfiddich is one of best-selling single malt across the world. It is one most awarded at various international spirits challenge.

In this document we are sharing the various challenges and strategies adopted by the company to become the brand it is. An important part of the growth was to attract the young millennials towards consumption of Whiskey.

Challenge

There was a time when Glenfiddich was losing 11% of its customers every year. With most of the drinkers belonging to age of 65 years, the company decided to look for younger people to try the brand and become loyal customers. Glenfiddich was looking for needed to discover how people perceived its brand and to understand its different customer segments.

Strategy

Glenfiddich first divided the whisky drinkers into two main target groups.

The first were those tagged as loyalists by Glenfiddich. This was about 60 % of the brand's drinkers. The second was "discerning selectors" - sensibly comfortable people in the age group of 40-50. This included those who drank around 10 bottles a year.

The main messages remained the brand's excellence and its variety of 10 Whiskey. Glenfiddich is the single Highland whisky bottling of which is done at source, and through the whole process the water source is constant.

Execution

Presky Maves established a relationship-marketing programme, which was first tested in Scotland. Williamson said that across Scotland houses only 9% of the total UK population but has a large %age of people who are whisky drinkers.

Here, Glenfiddich had no data for backup and reference. Presky Maves conducted a race to employe drinkers to a CRM programme. The prize was kept of value of £1,000 bottle of whisky. All those who participated were asked to share their contact details more communications and give answer to four questions: how much do you drink a week; what brands; what do you drink the most of; which do you prefer?

Stuart Woodrington, who is the creative director at Presky Maves mentioned that with the help of these questions they had a database to work on. The data was further used to create a CRM program, which will be using vouchers and communications to modify customer behavior and encourage them to be loyal to the brand.

- Direct mail: At first, the initial mail was meant for 5,000 people. They were selected on the basis of those who purchased more than 4 bottles of malt whisky a year. As per the data received from Experian. Those people who will sign up will further get a welcome pack and 3 communications every year. There have been 4 phases of activity so far, while more planned and in line.

- Inserts: A competition insert was present in the newspaper “The Herald” on Saturday and, ever since then, Glenfiddich is putting inserts in leading newspaper like The Herald, BBC Good Food and The Scotsman.

- Online: Glenfiddich conducted a competition at the popular website of scotchwhisky.net.

- POS/sampling: The brand is still holding monthly Mix club nights by Glenfiddich at Cargo in London's Shoreditch. Williamson says, it’s similar to a recruitment activity. Here the company is targeting guys in the age group of 30s. These are those people who are just entering the phase of settling down.

Impacts

The initial insert campaign attained a 5.6 % response rate, while the direct mail cells closed at 47 %. Overall, the result of campaign was almost 50 % more than the target in terms of employing frequent purchasers. With respect to the number of measures there was a growth of almost 29% by Glenfiddich 30% cent of those participating during the initial phase were not loyal Glenfiddich drinkers at that time.

Glenfiddich is likely to have 50,000 more people on its database by the end of the year. The company is also expecting growth of the same to 70,000 in the next year. Glenfiddich recently bought Glenmorangie. With this merger the company became the UK's most consumed brand of malt whisky.