In my work as a consultant almost every major whisk(e)y brand presentation I’ve seen in recent memory mentions Millennials. Any brand manager looking to shore up their credentials seems to be contractually obliged to use the word at least 50 times during any important presentation, but it won’t be long until Millennials will be replaced by Gen Z (people born in the mid-90s to the early 2000s). Gen Z make up over 25% of the US population already, and they’ve come of age at a point in time when consumers have more access to whisky than ever before, but more significantly they also have other options like recreational cannabis.
What are distillers doing to prepare for this new combination of consumers that will ultimately decide the future of the whisk(e)y industry? I sought to find out, speaking with a number of well known people in the industry to get their opinions.
Ewan Morgan, Program Director for Diageo’s Reserve Portfolio, had this to say, “There’s an immeasurable amount of work to be done in terms of education and awareness by the general public of legal drinking age. You may think this ‘awareness’ has no direct correlation on consumption but the two are, without question, inextricably connected. Globally, the growing demand for Whisk(e)y doesn’t seem to be slowing or even showing a forecast to plateau any time soon despite the protuberance of other alternative industries.” At a time when it seems like we are reaching “peak whisk(e)y” it’s sobering to hear someone with Ewan’s decades of experience state that there is so much more to do.
Doesn’t the existence of Diageo’s very own Game of Thrones tie-in bottles demonstrate the place whisk(e)y has taken in popular culture? Do emerging consumers really need more education on brown spirits?
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As we contemplate the future of whisky and the influx of new consumers something Sam said to me really struck a chord, “Make great whisk(e)y first, tell us how you did it after.”
Regardless of what cute nickname we give successive generations of consumers this simple maxim will stand the test of time – make the best liquid you possibly can then spread the word again and again and again. Trends will come and go, new social media outlets will appear, other consumer options will become available but the human connection to whisk(e)y will continue well into the future provided we keep educating people about it.
I’ll leave the last word to Ewan Morgan from Diageo, “It’s basically comfort in self-knowledge, its human nature at its most base, primal level, the more people understand the detail and minutiae of what makes a brand special or unique the stronger an advocate they become.”
