Against the tide

When George Smith distilled the first drops of The Glenlivet back in 1824, he defined the flavour of Speyside whisky. But The Glenlivet would never be what it is today if he had stopped there.

Client: The Glenlivet
Campaign: Original By Tradition

This film adds a chapter to the story of The Glenlivet, about its belief in being “Original by Tradition”. This time we dramatised how they are always pushing taste forward. The new campaign had to be just as epic as the launch, so we shot it on a giant, fully working treadmill: our protagonist outruns whisky fundamentalists, outsmarts imitators and breaks barriers, and still he never stops. Every sequence was shot with in-camera effects; the model bothy really tumbless off the treadmill and all the mirror columns were custom built for the “imitator” shot. The bar at the end slides into place on top of the oversize treadmill.

By holding on to the things that make it original and leaving past conventions where they belong, The Glenlivet has kept innovating and pushing the taste of whisky to new places. Many things have changed over the years, but it’s the pursuit of originality has driven The Glenlivet forward.

 Effectiveness

14.7%

growth (vs 4% category growth)  

#1

single malt in the US

Double digital

growth across 2019 and 2020, reversing decades of decline