William Grant & Sons India saw its blended malt Scotch whisky, Monkey Shoulder, as a great alternative for consumers of blended Scotch whisky and consumers wanting to upgrade to single malts. In fact, the company considered Monkey Shoulder as a perfect fit in the space between blended Scotch whisky and single malts.
Monkey Shoulder focuses on a cocktail-centric drinks strategy. Therefore, William Grant positioned it as a blended malt whisky that is great for making cocktails. It is also positioned as a cheeky whisky that breaks conventions of the whisky category, which has also been popularly accepted by the younger audience.
The brand has consistently focused on activating bartenders and getting them to try cocktails using Monkey Shoulder. In its launch campaign, top bartenders from Delhi, Gurgaon and Mumbai were introduced to the brand and they participated in a contest to sell their own version of Monkey Shoulder cocktails at their bars.
To engage with consumers, Monkey maps on social media were created to tell them where Monkey Shoulder
is available and what drinks they can go and try in each. This was accompanied by pub crawls and social media push using influencer platforms like LittleBlackBookDelhi For active involvement of bartenders in Monkey Shoulder promotion, Ultimate Bartender Championship (UBC), a global contest for bartenders, was run as a national contest with participation of India’s top 50 bartenders. The brand’s Global Brand Ambassador conducted trade and media interactions and also hosted the national finals for the UBC consumer activations at participating bars to drive cocktail consumption.
The brand in its first year got covered by leading publications of print and digital medium and the PR coverage was to the tune of more than Rs 1 crore
Since its debut in October 2015 in India, Monkey Shoulder has been received well by popular bars as well as by consumers across India in cocktail format. Its actual volume recorded in 2015 was more than 200% above the company expectations and the 2016 volume is growing at the similar rate.