Little brother

Rather than appearing as the natural step up from standard Ballantine’s bottle, the superior 12 Year Old presented in on-shelf terms more of a step down: it stood squat, square and barely shoulder height to its younger brother. Its heavy blue label felt outdated and unrelated to the rest of the portfolio and it hid the handsome Ballantine’s crest. It wasn’t standing out on shelves, and it wasn’t communicating “better”, “finer”, “authenticity” or “flair”. Nor was it really engaging with a younger audience, nor doing itself justice with the older whisky connoisseur. Dragon Rouge set out to change this.

Growth spurt

We made the bottle taller, immediately giving it more authority. We reduced the signature blue dramatically, and made the main label cream for vitality, to allow the crest to breathe, and to harmonise the bottle with its ‘big and little’ siblings in the rest of the range: now it was clearly part of the Ballantine’s family again. We made the Ballantine’s seal more premium, and with a younger audience in mind chose silver over gold to do this, making it far more contemporary. The subtly understated ‘flair’, however, came from adding a surprise UV varnish on certain key brand accents, which gave these aspects of the label a rich blue glow and impressive stand out in the all-important late-night environments where the product is enjoyed by a stylish younger drinking audience.

Going beyond

The bottle was extremely well received, and as a result we were asked to create a global on-trade activation campaign. New concepts, expressed in a range of executions from intriguing on trade in bar collateral and events to inspiring bar trade engagement activities to new inspiring ‘mixology’ centred around the idea of “go beyond”. The campaign encouraged people to explore hidden depths, unlock new possibilities, and discover a world of Ballantine’s 12 where there was far more than meets the eye... echoing, of course, the intrinsic qualities of this definitive fine whisky.