Case Study

Chivas Regal v/s Johnny Walker Black Label

Business strategies.

Date of submission: 26, Jan 2010.

Submitted to: Submitted by:

Mrs Nidhi Gogia, Saurabh Maurya
AIBS. Section- A, II sem,
A1802009205.
CHIVAS REGAL
Chivas Regal is a blended Scotch whisky produced by Chivas Brothers, owned
by Pernod Ricard. According to the brand packaging, Chivas Brothers was first
established in 1801 in Aberdeen, Scotland. The Chivas brand's home is Strathisla
Distillery at Keith, Moray in Speyside,Scotland.
It is the market leading Scotch whisky aged 12 years and above in Europe and Asia
Pacific.[1] Chivas Regal sales have grown by 61% between 2002 and 2008.[2]

Chivas Regal family

Chivas Regal whiskies are blended in a distinctive house style of a mellow, honeyed
flavour. [3]
Chivas Regal 12 Year Old: Blended from whiskies matured for at least 12 years. Taste:
Round and creamy on the palate, a taste of honey and ripe apples, with vanilla, hazelnut
and butterscotch notes.[4]
Chivas Regal 18 Year Old: Blended from whiskies matured for at least 18 years. Taste:
Chocolate and orange notes, some citrus and spice on the nose and a full, fruity, citrusy
and spicy palate, with sherry notes to finish. [5]
Chivas Regal 25 Year Old: Created using whiskies aged at least 25 years; available only
in limited quantities with a retail price of c$300.[6] Taste: The blend has tasting notes of
apricot and peach.

CHIVAS REGAL
AN OUTSTANDING BRAND
In 2005/2006, Chivas Regal continued its remarkable growth on the Premium
Scotch market by reaching 3.9 million cases sold (+11%), the highest level
ever achieved by the brand.
The brand achieved spectacular growth in Asia. Sales grew by over 50%
in a single year in China, where Chivas Regal is the number one imported
spirits brand. Results were also very good in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore
and Vietnam.
More generally, Chivas Regal progressed on nearly all its markets. The
brand achieved significant growth in Central and South America, most
particularly in its principal market, Venezuela (+20%), but also in Brazil,
Chile and Columbia.
In the United States, sales retreated slightly. In Europe, Chivas Regal
progressed, notably in France, Greece, the United Kingdom and Russia.
As an indication of the brand’s success in Greece, Chivas Regal was recognised
by the Hellenic Management Association as one of the “outstanding brands

Marketing Strategies of CHIVAS REGAL

Chivas Regal has launched a new global TV and print advertising campaign entitled Live
with Chivalry.The campaign is being implemented in Asian and Brazilian duty-free
markets with high visibility in-store promotions.

According to Chivas owner Pernod Ricard, it builds on the successful This is the Chivas
Life campaign launched in 2003, and celebrates the concepts of masculine brotherhood,
honour, class and sophistication. Pernod Ricard Americas travel-retail director of
marketing Saul Sola said: “These values of chivalry have recently been identified as
desirable by consumers around the world.”

An independent international lifestyle consumer survey carried out by leading research

company BrainJuicer in August 2008 on behalf of Chivas Regal in 17 countries attracted
3,000 respondents. It revealed that chivalry is a quality valued around the world with
71% believing they would have a far better quality of life if the people around them
adopted this new ideal. An overwhelming 95% of all men and women also said they
found chivalrous qualities attractive in the opposite sex.

The Asian duty-free promotion runs fromOctober 2008 to January 2009 at airports across
the region, offering customers the chance to receive a gift with purchase. The campaign
follows the first appearance of The Live with Chivalry advertisements in Brazil in
October in stores at São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro International airports.

Customers will receive Aviator sunglasses when they buy one bottle of Chivas Regal
12yo or a Chivas travel pilot bag if they buy two bottles of Chivas Regal 12yo or one
bottle of Chivas Regal 18yo. With either purchase, customers will be entered into a grand
prize draw to win a Top Gun Flight Knights experience for two in the UK.

PROMOTION
Chivas Brothers made a marketing investment of £55 million annually in the successful
“The Chivas Life” global advertising campaign for Chivas Regal. The campaign’s
objective is to make Chivas Regal 12 Year Old the world leader in premium Scotch.
Created by TBWA/G1 agency, the global TV and print campaign has been launched in
over 50 countries. Original and creative executions depict people finding fulfilment in
new experiences like ice fishing in Alaska, or travelling without a fixed destination.
The Chivas Life presents an epicurean vision of life, shared by spontaneous,
fun-loving people who don’t take themselves too seriously. The Chivas Life has become
synonymous with an aspirational lifestyle and appeals to a young, upwardly-mobile
market.
In 2006, the Pernod-Ricard Group, holding company of Chivas Brothers,
decided to include a moderation or prevention message in all new advertising campaigns
worldwide, adapted for local markets and authorised media, including posters, television,
cinema and written press. The responsible consumption of alcohol is a strong platform of
the Chivas brand.
JOHNNIE WALKER
Johnnie Walker is a brand of Scotch Whisky owned by Diageo and produced
in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, Scotland.
It is the most widely distributed brand of blended Scotch whisky in the world, sold in
almost every country with yearly sales of over 130 million bottles.[1] More than 120
million bottles are sold every year in some 200 countries, and more than four bottles of
Johnnie Walker are consumed every second around the world. 43 glasses of Johnnie
Walker® Black Label® are enjoyed by consumers every second of every day.
The original blend was created in 1820 and launched as “Johnnie Walker
Black Label” in 1909.

Diageo plc’s Johnnie Walker was one of the world’s top scotch brands in the late 1990s
and early 2000s, but blended scotch as a category was in long-term decline. Among
distilled spirits, meanwhile, vodka was booming, largely as a result of effective youth-
oriented marketing. Trying to shed a perception that scotch drinkers were stodgy, suit-
wearing business types, JohnnieWalker in 1999 unveiled a global branding campaign
called ‘‘Keep Walking’’ that continued to associate scotch drinking with success while
widening the definition of success to appeal to young drinkers. The U.S. version of this
campaign, which began in 2001, celebrated themaverick entrepreneurial ideas of the
1990s, but its message fell prey to changing perceptions of exactly such entrepreneurs
following the dot-com crash and successive corporate scandals. In 2003 Johnnie Walker’s
U.S. agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) of New York, set out to update ‘‘Keep
Walking’’ to accommodate yet another definition of success.

The new installment of ‘‘Keep Walking,’’ which had a budget of approximately $15
million, focused on life as a journey and offered Johnnie Walker as a product that helped
people navigate the uncertainties of that journey. The Striding Man logo, an image of an
aristocratically dressed man in midstride, had been used in the campaign’s prior
incarnations to represent the idea of personal progress; now the logo was used to suggest
the determination required to weather the many obstacles and strange turns one
encountered in life. The campaign’s print ads paired the Striding Man and the ‘‘Keep
Walking’’ tagline with stories of individual career paths that had taken unpredictable
turns, while outdoor executions featured the Striding Man as their central character, who
was shown having emerged from difficulties represented by simple visual symbols, such
as walls, rainclouds, and stock-market graphs.

BBH exceeded its goals of drawing attention to the Johnnie Walker brand and to the
Striding Man as a brand icon. The update of ‘‘Keep Walking’’ won a Silver EFFIE
Award in 2005. The concept behind the outdoor component of the campaign was
extended in a subsequent series of print and outdoor ads launched in late 2004.
COMPETITION
‘‘Keep Walking’’ supported Johnnie Walker’s two blended scotches, its Red Label and
Black Label products. Johnnie Walker Red was the more affordable and more popular of
the two and was America’s second-leading scotch brand, behind Dewar’s. Johnnie
Walker Black, the fourth-bestselling scotch in the United States at the time of the
campaign’s launch, was a rival to premium brand Chivas Regal, then the country’s
number five scotch. Dewar’s, like Johnnie Walker, was at this time attempting to update
its image and appeal to a younger audience. In 2000 the brand changed its approach to
print marketing, entering into advertising partnerships with a few strategically selected
publications, rather than continuing to run ads in as many as 20 magazines at a time. One
prominent Dewar’s partnership, with Men’s Journal, resulted in a 2003 project called
‘‘Conquer the Highlands,’’ an adventure story of two young men on an ‘‘extreme’’ tour
of Scotland, which ran as a print insert described as an ‘‘advertorial,’’ meaning it was
intentionally similar to the magazine’s content. This blurring of the boundaries between
editorial and advertising content tested magazine-publishing conventions of the time. The
theme was also adapted into a cable-television program, a one-hour adventure show that
likewise mixed the two young men’s adventures with product placement. Rather than
continuing to compete with vodka and other clear spirits for the youth market, Chivas
Regal in 2003 instead began repositioning itself to appeal to an older male market. In a
global ad campaign called ‘‘The Chivas Life,’’ the brand made no apologies for its
luxury roots, celebrating bold life choices such as going ice fishing in Alaska, ‘‘crossing
the room like you own it,’’ and embarking on a sailing trip, the destination of which was
decided by throwing a dart.

MARKETING STRATEGY

The new ‘‘Keep Walking’’ campaign had an estimated budget of $15 million and
involved distinct print and outdoor components meant to accomplish different tasks. The
‘‘Journeys’’ print series, which featured profiles of men who had achieved success in
unconventional ways, was meant to connect with consumers by making them evaluate
their own conceptions of personal progress and by showing them that Johnnie Walker
understood their lives. The outdoor portion of the campaign, called ‘‘Icons,’’ was less
personal and more overt in its branding, showing the Striding Man continuing to move
forward despite difficulties, which were represented by simple but suggestive graphics
against a black background. The ‘‘Journeys’’ ads included ‘‘Bar,’’ which showed a
young man standing behind the bar of his own cuttingedge drinking establishment. A
horizontal yellow timeline cut across the image, with copy reading, chronologically
across the page, ‘‘First Business Loan,’’ ‘‘Second Mortgage,’’ ‘‘Third Migraine,’’ and
‘‘Fourth Location.’’ Similarly, ‘‘Cave’’ summarized an unconventional career path,
showing a rear view of a man who was standing at the mouth of a cave that opened on to
the ocean. The copy keyed to the various stages of the timeline graphic read, ‘‘Discover
Caving,’’ ‘‘Discover Perfect Cave,’’ ‘‘Discover Others Will Pay to Be Guided There,’’
and ‘‘Discover Perfect Job.’’ ‘‘Producer’’ depicted a preoccupied man sitting in front of
an enormous audiomastering console. The story of his career path, as told via the
accompanying timeline, was, ‘‘Terrible Guitarist,’’ ‘‘Incompetent Drummer,’’
‘‘Laughable Lead Singer,’’ and ‘‘Double-Platinum Producer.’’ In each ad the Striding
Man logo appeared above the ‘‘Keep Walking’’ tag at the far right end of the time line,
suggesting the pictured individual’s determination.

The ‘‘Icons’’ ads sent similar messages, but through symbolic images rather than via
individual profiles. For instance, the Striding Man was shown emerging from the
precipitous valley of a stock market graph and climbing a slope indicating an upswing, a
clear reference to the recent economic woes that had affected many among the Johnnie
Walker target market. ‘‘Wall’’ depicted the Striding Man on the other side of a wall he
had just walked through, and ‘‘Cloud’’ showed him continuing to walk after having
weathered a rainstorm. In addition to point-of-service promotions, which linked imagery
from the national campaign to retail displays of the product, the campaign included a less
traditional element called a ‘‘Mentorship’’ program. The program involved sending E-
mail invitations that directed Johnnie Walker drinkers to a website where they could
register for social gatherings staged by the brand. These gatherings put the ‘‘mentors’’ in
a position to spread their brand enthusiasm to Johnnie Walker neophytes.

OUTCOME

BBH exceeded many of its goals for attracting attention to the Johnnie Walker brand. The
agency met its goal of increasing awareness of the Striding Man as brand logo. Whereas
only 22 percent of consumers were aware of the logo’s connection to Johnnie Walker
before the campaign ran, 50 percent made the connection after the ads had been running
for three months. While BBH had not staked the value of its campaign, which was more
concerned with building brand equity and identity, on its capacity to generate immediate
sales increases, a comparison of sales figures from the same three-month period the
previous year showed a dollar-sales increase of 3.7 percent and a volume-sales increase
of 3 percent. The campaign was awarded a Silver EFFIE Award in 2005. The concept
behind the ‘‘Icons’’ outdoor ads was extended in a print and outdoor campaign thatwas
launched in late 2004, in which the Striding Man was shown, as before, against a black
background, having successfully endured an obstacle represented by symbolic graphics.
More than 50 such adswere generated, and each was tailored to its medium, the timing of
its appearance, or (in the case of outdoor placements) its physical location. The ‘‘Keep
Walking’’ tagline and the Striding Man logo remained Johnnie Walker’s controlling
umbrella concepts in subsequent advertising both globally and in the United States
Recommendations to CHIVAS REGAL:

• Concentrate in the emerging Market like Asia, Brazil, Middle east where the
opportunity of large quantity of scotch sale is possible, because of high
population.

• Utilise Digital and Media Marketing which does reach the professional people
soon, who are meant to be the target audience of Scotch Whiskies.

• Public relation activities can be conducted using the huge network in local
market.

• Introduce direct retailing in the newly found market to serve the customers better
and to earn their loyalty.

• Reciprocate sponsorships and event conductions with many other entities of

various fields.

• Should adopt aggressive marketing strategy in US.

• Should introduce some new brands of whisky in US with different tastes and
flavours.

• Should adopt low pricing strategy as compared to Johnnie Walker.

• Should revive its promotional schemes with powerful punch lines.