Next Project
With the arrival of a global pandemic and lockdown in March 2020, social media saw a massive rise in screen time.
And although this became an increasingly terrible and uncertain time for most, brands like Royal Salute and Aberlour were able to start shifting their focus from going out to staying in, but drinking responsibly.
So what did people want from alcohol brands in the midst of a lockdown?
We conducted social listening across the wider whisky landscape to better understand Royal Salute and Aberlour's audience expectations.
Our findings suggested that people wanted more from Royal Solute as a brand; they wanted innovative and interactive formats, playful content, and authentic, educational brand pieces.
For Aberlour, it seemed there was a desire to be more playful with their social presence.
It was clear there was a huge opportunity for whisky brands to be connecting with their audience on a deeper, more meaningful level while maintaining perspective and remaining sensitive to the ever-changing situation.
We split our content into two groups - educational and interactive.
Royal Salute educational content included Instagram IGTV livestreams (promoted by omni-channel teaser posts and paid support on Facebook Events), a brand building story series (focusing on the evolution of the Royal Salute flagon), and a live Q&A (with previous Royal Salute artist, Kristjana S. Williams). Meanwhile interactive content included a cocktails at home IG story series, encouraging people to engage with the brand and products at home.
We followed a similar approach for Aberlour, but aimed to focus more on the playful and interactive content, which included refreshed in-feed content (based on trending lockdown memes and topics), 5 whisky ideas from home series (to engage people with the product at home via IG stories), an ambassador partnership (with Scottish wishy expert Lucy Miller, showcasing ‘at-home’ Aberlour recipe content) and a live IGTV interview with Aberlour Master Distiller, Graeme Cruickshank.
Royal Salute saw an increase in impressions of 25% from the previous month, and saw a considerable MoM increase of 92% in Instagram followers, highlighting the engaging nature of the reactive content and suggesting that our use of previously unexplored formats like Instagram’s IGTV paid off considerably.
Importantly, producing content based on what we were seeing within social listening ensured that we were maximising the brands personality and connecting with people on a deeper level.
Our first post for Aberlour, ‘Which house would be your go to?’, delivered over 330 organic comments at an engagement rate of over 7.5%.
Instagram followers grew 106% since the previous month. To further maximise impact, we used paid support for several posts, delivering a new type of high-quality content to a wider audience of prospecting followers.
