What if?

Could the world’s owner of the largest Scotch reserves attract and capture an entirely new younger and influential audience?

Results

The project began with an in-depth research to understand the Scotch category. With an understanding of what needed to change in the category, we built a strategy to attract and engage younger and more influential whiskey drinkers. One of the ways identified was to build compelling partnerships. Diageo had a relationship with HBO and we began exploring what a Game of Thrones collaboration might look like. To kick off the collaboration, we explored concepts that brought a range of storylines and characters to life in varying levels of complexities, ultimately landing on one that highlights the most prominent Houses of Westeros and their stories of intrigue, greed and triumph. Each House was strategically paired with a corresponding single malt from Diageo’s portfolio, connecting the liquid’s flavor notes and the distillery’s history and location to the House’s characters, themes and narratives. Inspired by the unique sigils for each House, we partnered with HBO concept artists to create custom illustrations to bring the concept to life. The result of which can be seen prominently featured on the front of both the bottles and canisters.

“They are one of our go-to, long-term innovation partners for new-to-world brands. Our collaboration with HBO and Game of Thrones has been exceptional, and the results at retail have been exceptional.”

—Jeffery Fink, VP, Creative & Innovation

Read more about the Game of Thrones series here →

What I did:

• Team facilitation and alignment

• Vision formation

• Strategy development

• Creative direction

• Product concept development 

• Brand architecture strategy 

• Product naming 

Partners:

• Design / Garrett Patz & Brett Jorgensen

• Rendering and 3D modeling / Garrett Patz

• Copywriting / Erin Borawski

• Work done at Bulldog Drummond