This is a series of lectures I delivered at Whisky Marketing School in May of 2016 in Toronto. The course was a perfect fit for me given that I am a lover of the beverage. It was also a very challenging course, both in terms of learning new ways of thinking about whisky marketing, and learning to speak in front of a group.
I could never really prepare myself for the lectures. I couldn’t even prepare myself for the audience. I had to find a way to be spontaneous and not overthink my delivery. I guess that’s the only way I could learn, and the only way I could ever get feedback on things I had done wrong.
So I think a lot of that is down to the skill of the lecturer. I think in that sense, most whisky marketing courses are actually kinda boring. I dont think they cater to a lot of people who are actually interested in whisky marketing, or who are willing to put in the time and effort to actually learn, just like a lot of other subjects.
For me, that’s not the case with whisky marketing school. I’ve known that I want to be a whisky marketer since I was a kid, but I never had the confidence to actually go for it. I decided to take a whisky marketing school course to help me get started. I was amazed at how much information I learned in such a short period of time. I didn’t realize that I had so much to learn about the industry and the way whisky is marketed.
I think it’s a good idea to take an whisky marketing course as there’s a lot to learn. The way most whisky marketing schools are designed, they only take into account the information that you already have and are looking to pass on to you. They don’t give you the chance to actually see how whisky is marketed and the kind of knowledge that you will learn. To get a real education, you need to take your information from the source, not from some lecture or seminar.
I’m not saying that whisky marketing courses are a waste of money, but I am saying that if whisky marketing is just a few things to learn, its still a waste. The amount of whisky that you can learn is quite limited. There is no way that you can learn a lot of details about whisky marketing without actually purchasing a lot of malt whisky. There is no way that you can learn anything about whisky marketing without actually buying a new car.
To be fair, I’m not trying to be mean here. There are lots of reasons that you’d like to see more training on whisky marketing. For one, the lack of knowledge is a major problem in whisky marketing. Many big whisky brands are too risk-averse to get the price right. Many smaller brands aren’t willing to spend the money for proper training because they don’t really know what they are doing.
The big brands (whisky, Scotch, etc) all use whisky marketing to their advantage by marketing directly in to the customers. That might sound like a no-brainer, but it doesn’t always work that way. The big brands get their products into the hands of the customers by offering them at a discount price. This means they can charge more, and more customers will be interested in buying their product. As a result, the customer loyalty increases.
I think the biggest complaint I have about whisky marketing is that sometimes the discount ends up being a loss. This happens a lot, but it has happened to me even though I tried to use the discount to the fullest. The fact is that the big brands are all competing to sell the most whisky in the world at the cheapest price. To me this defeats the purpose of the discount. I should be able to get the same whisky at the same price I could get at a different store.
