The seven pillars of Johnnie Walker’s advertising success

Diageo’s Johnnie Walker brand was the most awarded business in Kantar’s 2022 Creative Effectiveness Awards, walking away with category wins in Thailand, Mexico and the UK. Kantar sat down with the global marketing team and agency to unpack the brand’s winning formula, revealing seven key pillars its advertising and marketing strategy relies on.

The first pillar is consistency. Two decades ago when Johnnie Walker adopted the “Keep walking” slogan, progress was about status and individual progress. In more recent years it has morphed into a better future for everyone. Critically, it’s a slogan which still has meaning for today’s consumers and remains relevant. The longevity of the brand’s “Keep walking” slogan is unusual in this day and age. All too often, newly appointed brand managers want make their unique mark on a brand, in the process destroying the consistency of the brand.

The lesson in this instance is to avoid unnecessarily messing with the fundamentals of a brand. Consistency provides consumers with a mental short cut. Rather than making changes for the sake of change, look for ways to keep the core human truth relevant.

A closer look at Kantar’s subset of breakthrough brands reveals that they are more than 35% more likely to have emotive clarity. In other words, they are good at defining their emotional territory. Not only are brands with stronger emotive clarity more likely to be top of mind for consumers, they also tend to innovate more meaningfully, communicate more creatively, are better at experience and tend to be more responsible brands.

The second pillar Johnnie Walker’s success is based on is ensuring that local and global teams walk together in the same direction. It’s no secret that one of the most strained marketing relationships is the one that exists between global and local marketing teams.

The brand’s marketing teams operate in 50 markets. Their goal is to create advertising that can travel across multiple markets. The entire team understands that it services the same brand and that the local team is important in terms of delivering relevant local insights. Pertinent local insights can help to spark ideas that resonate powerfully, creating deeper engagement. This is based on the expectation that local markets will also build a globally consistent and coherent brand.

The third pillar is the ability to nail the brief. The most effective advertising tends to be born out of a stellar creative brief which is channel agnostic, leaving room for creativity. It requires a shared belief in the work and close collaboration. This is often easier said than done. Collaboration is easy when things are going well but not so easy when things aren’t going well.

The fourth pillar on which Johnnie Walker’s marketing relies is that it gets out of its own marketing bubble and researches ideas and tests assets with consumers as early as possible. It’s easy to assume that you know what consumers want, but predicting how people will react is a dangerous game.

Successful brands are able to balance being distinctive and creatively brave with the brand’s inherent brand cues which are familiar to consumers. As Johnnie Walker’s marketing team concedes, advertising that doesn’t work is because the message has been overcomplicated and has moved away from the brand’s iconic roots. Creating a culture of effectiveness requires leaning into the learnings — but without losing the engaging heart of the idea.

The fifth pillar is founded on the importance of being distinctive. In a highly cluttered environment, advertising that is not distinctive risks being overlooked or ignored. To ensure it is noticed, advertising needs to be brave, bold, distinctive, charismatic and disruptive.

The sixth pillar relies on a blend of creativity, intuition and precision. Diageo recognises that while creativity is important, it needs to apply precision to the development process, including improving return on investment. Its global teams nurture and protect the integrity of the idea throughout the process, ensuring that it is the centre of gravity for all brand encounters. Key to creating effective brand-building advertising is to ensure that everyone has a shared understanding of how the brand shows up.

Finally, Johnnie Walker’s advertising doesn’t take itself too seriously and remains infectiously entertaining and optimistic. Humour is one of the most effective ways of engaging audiences, according to Kantar’s Ad Reaction study. The study found that humour is the main reason consumers don’t skip ads in 30 out of 42 countries.

Ultimately, it is communication, creativity and consistency that have successfully set Johnnie Walker apart for the past 20 years.

* Natalie Botha is the director of creative development at Kantar

The big take-out: Communication, creativity and consistency have successfully set Johnnie Walker’s advertising apart for the past two decades.