Established in 1791, Power’s whiskey is the 2nd biggest whiskey brand in Ireland. However Power’s volumes and share of Spirits & Whiskey have been in steady decline over the past number of years.
This decline can be attributed to four main factors
1. Power’s relatively undefined brand image had begun to severely affect brand awareness
2. The perception of Power’s quality by non drinkers were much lower than reality dictated and were affecting consideration.
3. The Brand has slipped below the radar of many drinkers coming into the sector.
4. The decline of the On-Trade sector, which has traditionally been the stronghold of Power’s sales, compounded with the ‘death of the traditional Irish pub’ had meant the closure of many of its heartland pubs.
Quality had been identified as a key driver within the category. We knew that Power’s was a whiskey of genuine high quality, a favourite amongst all major whiskey critics and it had also won Gold at the International Spirits Competition 2009 in San Francisco.
The objective of this campaign was, therefore, to drive consideration by creating an advertising campaign that firmly established Powers strong credentials as a high quality whiskey.
We wanted to bring Power’s product quality credentials to life in a way that could appeal not only our loyal Power’s drinker, but also entice drinkers into the brand. We focused on bridging this perceptual quality gap for those unfamiliar with Powers.
To do this we selected 5 key product attributes to communicate: our strength of flavour: the honey notes of the whiskey: it’s earthy tones: it’s distinctive barley essence: and the warmth of a hot Powers.
We created a key visual for each of these with Powers at the heart of each and had them photographed by top European stills photographer Marcel Christ.
The resulting imagery formed the basis of a cross media campaign. These striking, evocative visuals were accompanied by copy that asked the viewer to ‘Discover’ these distinctive characteristics themselves and were underscored by the line ‘Power’s. It’s Ours’.
Over the life of the campaign trial of the brand increased 4%, occasional consumption increased 7% and most often (brand preference) consumption increased 3% in line with sales trend data.
Outside of these campaign KPI’s the brand also increased its score against every single point of measurement during this period to December 2010.
