Results and Effectiveness

‘We see substantial brand image shifts across the board in China.’ Achieved double digit shifts against objective: to drive closer association with Johnnie Walker as a brand that inspires personal progress: - ‘Encouraging men to move forward in life’ +18% - ‘Symbol of progress’ +13% - ‘Pioneering’ +11% (SOURCE: Milward Brown tracking) - Total unique users : 7.7M - Online video gained 1.1M views via video sharing sites, and 1M views on the website. - 717,000 hours spent with the brand. (SOURCE: Diageo tracking) - In China, Sales volume grew by 7% in Q3/Q4 2008. (SOURCE: Diageo annual report 2008)

Creative Execution

A dramatic longform multi-media narrative was the creative solution. The narrative featured a pact made between a group of friends, bound to support the dreams of one of the group, Jason, to become a movie director. We created 5 episodes in the story. 3 of them were cut down to 30” episodes for Television and 2 were longform episodes airing online only. Television and digital video delivered mass awareness of the Pact story and introduced cliffhangers resolved on the website. DVD advertising in contextually relevant movie releases expanded on the story. Live events allowed people to meet the characters from the narrative in the real world. In-bar POSM encouraged consumers to engage further and make their own Pacts. Once the final episode was launched the narrative was wrapped up with a series of digital graphic novels and online games.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Globally, the Johnnie Walker brand stands for personal progress, communicated by the famous line ‘Keep Walking’. The global advertising, whilst liked and seen as statusful, wasn’t resonating with Chinese men. They found it hard to link with the whisky drinking moment, solitary and a little cold. As a consequence, they did not connect drinking Johnnie Walker with personal progress or fully emotionally engage with the brand. In China progress is shared and the drinking moment social, hence the task was to create a link between the line ‘Keep Walking’ and the whisky drinking occasion in a way that was cognisant of how friends support each other to progress. The answer was to create a ‘Keep Walking’ toast as a symbolic pact between friends that binds them to support each other to succeed. The strategy needed to be modern, different and engaging. Something more than an ad campaign.