The Christmas Day Mavericks

  • George Leaney
Christmas has always been a huge occasion for celebration for Glenfiddich, and last year was no different. Whisky is a popular gift at this time of year, and that means that every distillery and brand are trying to make sure it’s their bottle that makes it under the Christmas tree. With so many to choose from, we had to do something different.

The festive period is usually time for traditions and conformity. For some though, tradition doesn’t have to be traditional.

For the Glenfiddich Christmas campaign they wanted to do something that reaffirmed their status as the Maverick Whisky Makers of Dufftown. Having been given the brief, we came up with the idea of finding people who do things differently at Christmas.

Straight away we found a group of swimmers who swim Loch Lomond (every week and) on Christmas Day and approached them to be the faces of our festive campaign.

Having got them to agree, it was now up to us to get the client to buy the idea. We knew this might be a hard sell so we went METHOD. And so, on a cold October’s morning at 8.30am, myself and a few others, strapped on some waterproof GoPros and went for an icy dip in the Serpentine.

Cold doesn’t even come close. However, the client loved our commitment to the idea.

As well as the film, we also did the landing page for the Glenfiddich website and produced all the social and digital communications. Including some biography pieces about the swimmers, which has produced further engagement and has got them their own exposure in the press up in Scotland.