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At the beginning of this month, I received an email from a public relations representative that gave me cause to tip a glass in her direction.
The subject line: “The Gift of Laphroaig For Mother's Day.”
For those of you who don’t drink Scotch, Laphroaig is one of more than half a dozen distilleries on Islay, an enchanted (in my mind anyway) island off the west coast of Scotland that traditionally produces the smoky, peat-heavy malt that gives Islay Scotch its signature character. Earlier in the year I’d written a column about my perception that despite the existence of whiskey-loving women being old news, too many liquor brands, stores and their ilk were still sticking to the antiquated paradigm of marketing wine to Mom and beer and spirits to Dad.
So when I responded to the pr pitch, I told the rep that I could hug her client for its progressive outlook. The answer I got from Laphroaig’s Master Ambassador Simon Brooking was this: “Laphroaig Select Scotch Whisky is the ideal introduction to the Laphroaig portfolio for the mom who is an aspiring Scotch drinker. This expression is more approachable than the rest of the Laphroaig portfolio while still managing to bring together robust flavors that are all at once, exquisite, complex and deep, brought about by the marrying of maturation styles and varying oaks.”
I appreciate that. His comment speaks to women who might find themselves curious, albeit understandably intimidated, about Scotch in a way that I don’t find belittling. Some will argue that the same applies to men, and that’s true, but we have to allow for the fact that Mother’s Day approaches and Laphroaig and its pr agency are in the business of promoting and selling Laphroaig with methods they deem timely and relevant.
I followed up with an email to Jenni Karakasevic, who married into a whiskey family and runs operations for the Northern California craft distillery her mother-in-law foundationally helped establish. Charbay Distillery markets all of its spirits for Mother’s Day, she told me, and added that she encourages Manhattans with brandied cherries for the holiday. Even skeptical women love her distillery’s whiskey, she explained, in part because the deep and rich flavor gets accented by green spice notes from hops and brown baking spice touches from cinnamon, nutmeg and clove.
“I especially love pouring our whiskey for women, because they have usually predetermined that they just don't like whiskey. If I can get them to smell it, 99% of the time they will try a taste. And it blows them away!” she emailed.
Feeling pretty upbeat about my determination that distilleries are starting to catch on, I chatted with Fred Minnick, who literally wrote the book on women and whiskey (or “whisky,” depending on nation of origin) and wears the enviable title of “Bourbon Authority” for the Kentucky Derby Museum. Our conversation showed me I was, according to the thinking of women at the top of the international whiskey game, quite last decade in my analysis.
Sure, I’ve written about whiskey (and women) for several years, but as more of a spirits generalist, I now realize I’m approaching being almost as tone deaf as the entities I’ve criticized. Minnick says some spirits companies now intentionally avoid targeting women because experience has taught them that it actually generates backlash among many in-the-know females in the industry. Unlike me, Minnick receives plenty of pitches for whiskey as Mother’s Day gift.
However, over the last three years, he says, “It’s evolved into being (more of) a gender-neutral approach. Every time a brand makes it public in a press release that they’re trying to market to women there’s always someone who finds it demeaning. ”
Call it the influence of post-feminism, an ideology embraced primarily by Millennials. Just as in the craft beer and other traditionally male-dominated industries, post-feminist women resist being identified by their gender. They don’t want to be segregated from their male colleagues for fear of getting viewed with condescension or cynicism, and they usually loathe the ubiquitous question of what it’s like to be a woman in a male world.
Their argument has merit, even from the consumer side. Research shows that pink-washing a product does little more than piss people off, and that efforts to sweeten a drink, soften its packaging or cutesy-up its name will generate ill will instead of higher sales. The real way to get women to try something, as Karakasevic and Minnick agree, is to get them to try it.
“It’s all about the taste,” Minnick says. When he hosts sampling events for 120 proof Booker’s bourbon, for example, “Women are always drawn to it. They add water and find out that they get a completely different whiskey.”
Marketing researchers emphasize, however, that in order for the process to work, the product has to contain quality and flavor, regardless of how peaty, hoppy or sweet it is or isn’t. So while some may bristle at Laphroaig’s appeal to Mother’s Day, the 200-year-old distillery does exactly what consultants tend to advise. They back it up with messaging that speaks specifically to the merits of the liquid and take it further by infusing a little education.
“Laphroaig 10 Year Old Scotch Whisky is perfect for the mom who is already a confident Scotch drinker,” emails Brooking. “This flagship Laphroaig expression carries the brand's signature peat flavor — often referred to as ‘peat reek’ — and is heralded as the ‘Gold Standard’ to which all other Laphroaig expressions, and Islay Scotches in general, for that matter, are compared.”
Minnick approves of educational marketing and advertising. Though he differentiates between whiskey branding/marketing and advertising, which he calls, “whatever someone on Madison Avenue comes up with,” he commends some commercials that do blatantly aim at women, like the one in which Jim Beam spokesperson Mila Kunis explains the role of barrels in aging. Yes, a very sexy Kunis is standing in a barrel room surrounded by fire but I agree with Minnick that she’s admired by both women and men and that the TV ad allows her to speak from a (fully clothed) position of strength and knowledge.
Perhaps Beam gets what some of the whiskey women who color themselves offended don’t. Lately, several whiskey producers and analysts have commented to me that despite brown liquor’s popularity, practically no one in America understands it. So while it’s easy for the hip and erudite to scoff at the idea that the unwashed masses don’t know the basic differences between Scotch and bourbon, for example, the truth is that most of the population doesn’t know the basic differences between Scotch and bourbon. And for those in the business of making money off Scotch, bourbon, Irish whiskey or Canadian or Japanese, it’s crucial that marketers meet prospective consumers where they are, whether that’s reading Forbes.com, shopping for groceries, flipping through a women’s mag or watching The Golden Girls.
Yes, The Golden Girls.
“I’ve watched Golden Girls with my wife (ed. note: whatever you say, Fred) and have seen those Beam ads,” he says. “And who doesn’t love The Golden Girls?”
He says he finds Maker’s Mark’s Mother’s Day ads “cute” and notes that Whisky Advocate, the most reputable whiskey magazine in the country, is running an article entitled, “9 Floral Whiskies To Gift This Mother’s Day Instead of Flowers.” As a woman, I’m not ready to write an angry letter to the editor. I simply don’t think our gender is there yet. I feel the same way about beer and I feel the same way about politics. Women still hold preciously few jobs in breweries, especially in operations, and though no one wants to talk about it, sexism does exist within the craft brewing community. Likewise, Millennial women can take their right to abortions and healthcare and paid leave and everything else for granted, at their own risk, but should sober up after an election in which they helped Hillary Clinton lose to Donald Trump and Mike Pence.
So the point is this. I believe women should embrace efforts to include us as empowered consumers and reward companies that treat us like the independent, aware shoppers that we are -- on Mother’s Day and any other. Sure, some less sophisticated campaigns end up clumsy, shallow or even hollow. But I don’t count Charbay or Laphroaig among them.
Not that inclusion always equals expertise. But as I said, a woman helped lay Charbay’s foundation and another woman continues to build its structure. And while I can’t claim to know Laphroaig’s entire history with women, I can tell you that over the course of more than 40 years, beginning in the early 1930s, a woman named Bessie Williamson rose from secretary to distillery manager to owner. Not only did her career make her the 20th century’s only female distillery manager in Scotland, it earned her the enduring unofficial title of “The Mother of Laphroaig Scotch whisky.”
