Inside Diageo's $210 Million Investment in Scotland's Johnnie Walker Brand Experience

This summer, as tourism is set to slowly return to Scotland, whisky brand Johnnie Walker will invite consumers to come walk with it in the heart of the country’s capital when it opens the doors of its long-awaited $210 million (150 million pounds) visitor’s center brand experience. While the finishing touches are still being added to the multimillion-pound center near the foot of Princes Street within the former House of Fraser Building facing Edinburgh Castle, the Diageo-owned brand, which aims to open itself up in an immersive way to new and old whisky drinkers, will welcome fans to sample and engage with its products across eight floors. Known as Johnnie Walker Princes Street, the experience is a long-term investment on the part of the brand, which expects visitors to spend two or three hours of their day exploring it. “We're looking at the next 200 years and how you can experience the brand in new ways,” said Alan McGarrie, brand home and retail marketing manager for Johnnie Walker. The vision behind Johnnie Walker Princes Street Johnnie Walker Princes Street was created in collaboration with BRC Imagination Arts, which has designed some of the world’s most well-known visitor attractions including the Guinness Storehouse, NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Museum of Liverpool and Jameson Distillery Bow St. Adweek spoke with McGarrie about the experience center and what he hopes it achieves for the brand. It's the industry's biggest investment into whisky tourism.Alan McGarrie, brand home and retail marketing manager, Johnnie Walker McGarrie has been preparing for the launch of the experience since joining Johnnie Walker from Scottish lager brand Tennent’s in November 2019. He said Covid-19 impacted the brand's plans, not least because of the lack of tourism, so he is pleased to see the project enter its launch stage after "three or four years in the making," and he recognizes the significance of the scale and the unique opportunity the project has afforded. Alongside the flagship experience, another $49 million (35 million pounds) is being invested in upgrading and reopening other visitor attractions around Diageo’s network of Scottish distilleries: Talisker, Glen Ord, Oban, Dalwhinnie, Blair Athol, Cragganmore and Royal Lochnagar as well as the reopening of "lost distilleries" located at Port Ellen on Islay and the village of Brora. “It's the industry's biggest investment into whisky tourism,” McGarrie said of the $260 million (185 million pounds) overall spend by Diageo on new and updated Scottish experiences at both the Edinburgh venue and its various distilleries. “When you come to Princes Street, you'll be encouraged to go to the other Diageo distilleries, primarily the Four Corners which are other distilleries that we find are more intrinsically linked to the Johnnie Walker brands where they will be encouraged to call in and taste the different flavors,” he added. It’s an absolute dream to go to these places and collect a bottle that hasn’t been sold anywhere else.Alan McGarrie The Edinburgh experience will offer eight levels with different brand experiences on each, including a retail space with exclusive offers and a tour, a space to host events and two rooftop bars, one of which offers views of the castle and the city surroundings. “From an international tourist perspective, we want to be seen as the must-see attraction when you come to Scotland or when you come to Edinburgh. We want this to be high on the bucket list," McGarrie said, adding that exclusive bottlings overseen by the venue’s innovation manager will be available to capture the interest of whisky connoisseurs. One of the bars within the Johnnie Walker Princes Street Experience. “For a whisky aficionado, it’s an absolute dream to go to these places and collect a bottle that hasn’t been sold anywhere else. … It's just such a special experience," McGarrie said. Learning from Guinness One of the long-term ambitions for the Johnnie Walker experience is to emulate that of Diageo stablemate Guinness and its storehouse in Dublin which has become a must-see attraction for visitors to the Republic of Ireland’s capital. “Operationally, they are best practice, and they have got the right formula to be able to excite and entertain their guests, and so there's lots of different learnings across the board including the more boring stuff like how we set up the teams and taking on board what best practice looks like and applying it to our to our model and Scotland's," McGarrie said. The tour of the experience will include the chance to see assets from the Diageo archive and its 200 years of history as well as a look back at the international marketing of Johnnie Walker. The Striding Man on the roof of the Johnnie Walker Princes Street Experience. “The 'Keep Walking' mantra is such a powerful brand asset along with the Striding Man, which is one of the most well-known logos in the world and so, using these assets as a way to land the fact that Johnnie’s come back to Scotland and that we are a global brand with a Scottish passport … that is celebrated and enjoyed across the world," McGarrie said. Repeat visitors will be offered a different experience, too, with a concentrated effort to serve different flavors across the brand’s range and widen the tastes of those who return. The digital backbone to the project With hundreds of thousands of people expected to pass through the doors each year, McGarrie admits the data-capture and customer-relationship-management elements will be a vital addition to the marketing team’s engagement strategy. "We don’t see it as this linear journey where we service visitors with an email," he said. "It's more cyclical than that. We want to be able to interact with our consumers so that they’ll want to visit and experience the brand again and again through all the different touchpoints.” Those experiences could include an email at Christmas or during holidays when people buy whisky as a gift and can be done through its ecommerce offering. McGarrie is also keen for people to share their experiences digitally with family and friends to encourage them to visit. Having a strong digital backbone is going to be vital to the delivery of the consumer experience.Alan McGarrie The strategy for promoting the opening of the venue has included public relations, widespread press coverage to build awareness and email registrations aimed at driving ticket sales. The brand has also drafted advertising agency Frame, PR agency Smarts, design consultancy Story, digital marketing agency Made Brave, creative agency Smyle and media buyer PHD to help with promotion. And a campaign involving paid search, TV, digital and social media is expected to launch early this summer. Diageo has been working closely with Visit Scotland and other local and international tourism partners to understand what visitors want from their time in the country as well as the ongoing situation with the pandemic and visitor numbers. “That has really allowed us to be able to be specific about our overall vision but also the targeting when it comes to the different types of consumer that may want to visit,” McGarrie said. With the digital revolution that has taken place internationally since the beginning of the pandemic, more event spaces are looking to offer hybrid virtual-physical experiences, something McGarrie isn't ruling out. “Having a strong digital backbone is going to be vital to the delivery of the consumer experience within Princes Street,” he said of making the venue a success around the world. 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