OPENING THE DOOR
When Glenmorangie’s Wes Anderson-style advert It’s Kind of Delicious and Wonderful landed at the tail end of 2020, it elicited an overwhelmingly positive response. A dreamscape version of the Scotch whisky distiller’s world (their words, not mine), it features an ensemble of young revellers enjoying a glass of whisky at the piano, on a train, in a tent and on a rooftop. It’s colourful, vivid, fun and – most importantly – inclusive, featuring a cast of ethnic- and gender-diverse ‘drinkers’. It’s a world in which people from different parts of society can find themselves being represented and, ultimately, see Glenmorangie as a drink that might be for them. Scrolling back through the distillery’s Instagram page, it is also a marked difference from the brand’s previous visual communications, those being largely a sea of white, male faces – the age-old whisky drinker stereotype.
It’s not only Glenmorangie making a recent statement when it comes to taking a stance on whisky’s diversity issue in the UK. In September 2020, the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) launched its Diversity and Inclusivity Charter, with an aim of making the industry 50:50 in terms of gender, acknowledging the barriers to the industry faced by underrepresented groups, and encouraging the
