Grant's feels the need for speed

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Sponsoring the Jaguar Formula One team has moved Grant's whisky firmly into the spotlight. With another Formula One Grand Prix season off the...

Sponsoring the Jaguar Formula One team has moved Grant's whisky firmly into the spotlight.

With another Formula One Grand Prix season off the starting grid, attention is turning to one of the world's noisiest sports - and it's not just noisy in terms of sound.

Sponsors and advertisers clamour to squeeze their logos onto every available inch of chassis, every empty stitch of driver's overalls. If Michael Schumacher's underpants were visible, you would probably find an ad for bratwurst.

The advertising noise is deafening, but listen closely and you will hear a small Scottish accent whispering William Grant's Family Reserve.

Grant's sponsorship of the Jaguar Formula One team may not be among the loudest on the track, but it is playing an important role in driving the scotch brand's revival.

While, according to the Publican's 2001 Brands Report, Grant's has dropped out of the top five on-trade whiskies this year, it has been performing well in the off and is beginning to take a higher profile on the back bar.

Last Christmas its share of the market topped five per cent, significant when you realise that the figure had plunged to 3.6 per cent as recently as December 1998. Volume has gone from 250,000 cases, declining at the rate of 14 per cent per annum, to 350,000 cases and climbing.

It is a sign that the brand might just reach the ambitious goal set for it by distributor First Drinks Brands. Grant's is two years into a five-year plan that aims to double market share and take it to number three spot behind Bell's and the Famous Grouse.

The Formula One sponsorship is central to that strategy - yet it came about almost by accident.

"We wanted to give licensees things they wouldn't normally see from a blended scotch," explained trade marketing manager Alec Guthrie. "We don't have two or three million to spend on television advertising, so we have to make Grant's different, do the unexpected.

"But we didn't imagine, when we started out, that it would be Formula One. The only names you usually see associated with the sport are global brands."

The inspiration to change that state of affairs came from Scots Formula One legend Jackie Stewart himself. Stewart had taken over the Jaguar team and wanted to give his sponsorships "a more human side - he wanted a link with Scottish brands, something that Scots themselves would relate to," said Mr Guthrie.

"Jackie Stewart is one of those irresistible characters. If he didn't exist you would have to invent him. When we sat down to talk about the idea it took us about three seconds to decide it was the right thing to do.

"There is an unexpected fit between the values and visions of motor racing and scotch whisky, the high-tech and craft traditions complement one another."

So Grant's, along with Barr's, the maker of Irn Bru, and mineral water Highland Spring, joined Jaguar as junior partners.

Although Stewart has taken a back seat since the team was taken over by Ford, the relationship continues. You won't see the Grant's name on the cars or on the drivers - Eddie Irvine and Luciano Burti - but it has a prominent place in the pits, on the trailers and at Jaguar Racing's headquarters in Milton Keynes.

This gives the brand a respectable profile in the Formula One world at a reasonable price - in five figures - but more important is the way in which First Drinks' exploitation of the sponsorship helps to develop the relationship between Grant's and the on-trade.

The deal works back the other way, for instance, to allow Grant's to use the Jaguar logo on its own publicity. Pub-goers are most likely to have noticed this in the F1 Start Line Optic promotion, a simple but striking bit of kit in which barstaff press a button for every shot of the scotch to set off a line of randomly flashing lights. If it finishes on green, the customer gets the drink free.

For First Drinks, this gives the brand a point of difference in the scramble for position on the back bar.

"It is critical for us to get our bottles on Optic," said Mr Guthrie. "We know that if you don't do that, people won't ask for Grant's by name. So you need to give the trade something to make it worthwhile for them to make room for your brand.

"The Start Line Optic helps to bring theatre to an outlet's whisky sales, it makes scotch a bit more exciting. Licensees like it because it gets people talking at the bar - and, for us, it's cheap. We can put it into a lot of pubs and build the scale of the promotion."

Another boost that has come as a direct result of the sponsorship is the growth of the Grant's 100 Club. This is composed of licensees in Scotland who order more than 100 cases in a year and are rewarded with the free hire of an S-Type Jaguar for a whole year.

Fifty have so far qualified, half of them new customers, improving Grant's performance in better quality scotch outlets. The idea has attracted so much interest in the trade that there is now a scheme in which 20-case accounts can win the Jag for a month.

"It's not like we are giving away a couple of T-shirts," said Mr Guthrie. "This is the kind of thing which is generating a lot of noise in the trade."

The Jaguar connection is also producing less tangible results. How the Formula One association works in the mind of the consumer is hard to pin down, but there is no doubt that it has a positive effect on brand image.

Formula One is the most watched series of sports events on the planet with an audience of 500 million people in 130 countries and this year's Grand Prix season promises to be a particularly open affair. David Coulthard - a Scot - is among those seriously challenging Schumacher, and new boy Juan Pablo Montoya is threatening to shake everyone up. Jaguar's Irvine and Burti have yet to make much of an impression themselves, but that probably isn't the crucial factor.

As Alec Guthrie points out, Jaguar is near the bottom of a long learning curve in Formula One, up against the experience of Ferrari, McLaren and Williams, but the fact that it is competing at that level is having an impact on the Jaguar brand, returning an impression of quality to the old name.

Like Grant's, Jaguar has ambitions to be in the top three and is prepared to make the vast investments that Formula One success requires over several seasons. It will be interesting to see whether the whisky can hitch a ride.

Remaining Grand Prix dates: