Integrating data to provide actionable insights for The Macallan

We showed luxury whisky distiller Edrington the best routes to growth, by combining trackers, data sources and insights, and inspiring new creative and campaigns for The Macallan brand.
Head of Insight, Edrington“This was a really useful piece of work for us to step back and review where we stand with our target audience and how we can connect with them. The strength of this review was it connected our touchpoints project, brand health work and our digital presence to ensure that it could help our teams tie their work to the success criteria we are aiming for.”

Challenge

Our client, a luxury whisky distiller, had a wealth of information about their brand and customers via brand health trackers, social media insights, touchpoint surveys and more. These were delivered in siloes, using different reporting language and metrics making it hard for The Edrington Insight team to extract actionable insights for The Macallan brand.

Approach

We used a number of data resources and solutions from across Kantar to uncover insights to help optimise The Macallan marketing strategy.

We began by building The Macallan’s target audience in our TGI Consumer Data, allowing us to gain rich insight into purchase behaviour, media exposure and consumption, brand and product affinity, attitudes and values behind these consumers. Armed with this insight we built an audience with these same characteristics in social media using a passive listening panel.

In parallel we used the Kantar Connect touchpoint analysis tool to identify the brand’s key touchpoints.

Finally, we used our Paid Search Intelligence solution to track whisky-related search terms allowing us to see what terms competitors were using.

Insight

From Kantar Connect we learnt that gifting was a key brand touchpoint for The Macallan. This was mirrored in the insight from the social listening panel; we discovered that a key growth audience was sons and daughters aged 30-40 discussing gifting whisky. From TGI Consumer Data we learnt that 95% of the target audience agreed with the statement “I like to give gifts that have the wow factor”.

Using Paid Search Intelligence, we found no competitors were running social or search gifting campaigns.

We also learnt from Kantar's Consulting division that brands that sell experiences over product and are more intimate are more likely to be high growth brands.

With this insight, we advised the Edrington Insight team to activate a long-term intimate gifting strategy for The Macallan brand around special occasions and big-ticket gifting occasions. Our results were presented with example creatives and copy across key touchpoints.

Impact

We made life easier for our client. Combining the brand health trackers, social media, TGI Consumer Data, Paid Search Intelligence, Connect and now Context Lab, we identified actions likely to drive growth and measure the outcomes in a common language with unified metrics. Our insight inspired creative and campaigns to reach and resonate with target audiences. We can now measure short- and long-term impact around engagement and brand equity for The Macallan.

The depth and breadth of our insight allowed us to operate as a more strategic partner. We were able to support a wider set of stakeholders and the insights inspired new creatives for The Macallan.

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