Johnnie Walker: execution counts as much as strategy

On a recent trip to Beirut I was struck by a huge billboard for Johnnie Walker featuring Bernard Khoury, a local architect who had helped re-build the city, bombed to pieces by 15 years of civil war. Khoury was a guy who dramatised the brand's philosophy of "Keep Walking". An earlier billboard had an even more direct illustration of how the people of this amazing city were determined to progress despite the horror and hardship of war.

The poster was a reminder of how Keep Walking has become a truly global campaign, but one that has been embraced and personalised by local markets. Some of the secrets to this success then popped into my in-box yesterday in the form of a cracking case study from Marc at Effective Brands. The case showed how a 9.5% sales decline from 1995 to 1999 was turned into growth of 3.7% and recall was doubled.

My take-out from the case is that this success is less to do with the smart strategy the case focuses on, and more to do with excellence of execution. Let's look at why.

Keep Walking is based on an insight that success today is not only about material rewards, its also about "the journey". This led to a brand idea of "Inspiring personal progress". So far, so smart. However, Johnnie Walker was not alone in coming up with this idea. Countless other brands got to the same place at the same time. What really sets Johnnie Walker apart is the excellence of execution.

1. Brand baked in

The tagline "Keep Walking" is a simple but extremely powerful bit of creative work by ad agency BBH. It brings to life the brand idea with a call to action. But the real genius is how the brand is "baked in" by using the idea of walking, linked to the brand name and symbol.

2. Visual impact

A great job has been done in simplifying and amplifying the walking man symbol, creating great visual impact. Only white, gold and black are used, creating aspirational appeal as well as stand out. This led to the "stopping power" of the billboards being measured at 80% by Milward Brown, vs. a benchmark of 60%.

And a little tweak I had not noticed was to have the walking man walk from left to right, not right to left, to better illustrate progress. Clever eh?

3. Single idea, multiple executions

Rob Malcolm and his global marketing team at Diageo were able to go from 27 different advertising campaigns for Johnnie Walker down to one, a feat that many global brand folk can only dream about. Part of this success is down to their focus on the big idea and "brand assets" (symbols, tagline, colour pallette), rather than a straight-jacket executional format and structure.This approach actively encourages local teams, like the one in Lebanon we saw earlier, to adopt and adapt the campaign. The way Rob describes this is that global brand management is about "Acting global. Thinking local".

4. Consistency to create memory structure

 The Keep Walking campaign has been running for 15 years, and has produced 30 TV commercials, over 150 print executions and many other marketing ideas. And this sort of incredible consistency has helped build "memory structure", hard-wiring brand symbols and meaning into our brains. You can click below to watch one of the TV ads featuring actor Harvey Keitel.

In conclusion, Johnnie Walker offers true inspiration for any global brand team. Yes, of course, creating a smart strategy which has global relevance is a tough and important job. But Keep Walking also shows how excellence in execution is just as important, if not more so, to ensure the idea is truly embraced and utilised on a global scale.

Comments

[logowi.com]

Talking about this brand evolution, i think that i prefer the older one with little things of the new one, older is in a white background and in my opinion is more easy to remember. I put like an example the facebook logo, put the facebook logo without the blue background and you have??? thanks.

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[Phil from decode]

Liked the pieces on Johnnie Walker and Addison Lee. Couple of comments from the neuro perspective;
 
i.                     Your point about the walking man being turned around is important, certainly for cultures where we read from left to right. The implicit code of moving from left to right means, as you rightly point out, progress. We associate the left hand side with the past, with what’s given. We associate the right with the future, what’s to come.
ii.                   Both cases illustrate the importance of coherence & consistency. We both know that successful brands are ‘short-cuts’ to neuro-psychological rewards that save the brain having to engage in energy-sapping cognitive reflective processing. So associating your brand with a motivating reward is the first step. Then signalling that reward via codes that the implicit/autopilot system analyses & recognises as meaning that reward is the next step. Forging strong neural networks that associate a brand with a reward (and vice versa) is key. Science shows that ‘what fires together wires together’ and the more it does, the stronger & faster the connection. It’s a bit like a well-trodden path; if it’s not used it becomes over-grown and, hence, slow and difficult to navigate. The same thing happens if brands’ touchpoints are incoherent (i.e. don’t signal the reward) or inconsistent (i.e. across touchpoints and/or over time). The distinctive memory structures break down. How many times do we see this happening?!

[David Taylor (brandgym)]

Rob
Thanks for taking time to add your personal views on the Keep Walking story - great to have it from the front-line :-)

Regarding the insight and idea, I'm sure it was of course key, and distinctive in whisky. My point was more that I've seen the same insight/idea on many other categories, including lots of beer brands, but none executed as well as you and the team did.
Regards
David

[Rob Malcolm]

David, Thanks for the plug. It is quite a transformational case study - the best one i have been privileged to be part of in my 35 year marketing career.

My one quibble is I do think you underestimate the power of a breakthrough strategy based on deep universal human insight into consumer motivation. The whisky category had always been associated with status - achievement, having arrived, being wealthy and successful. The breakthrough - coming from rigorous insight work across multiple countries and cultures was that the next generation was far more interested in the journey, the effort than the "arrival". Progressing is far more dynamic, active and inspirational to the target who is at the beginning of their journey, than achievement at the end. This led to a strategy - Johnnie Walker inspires me to progress - that was essential to the development of the creative idea. The key word is the verb "inspires". The advertising must not just communicate, it and the brand must indeed inspire - a taller order.

There is no question that the creative idea - "Keep Walking" - is pure genius. But John O'keefe of BBH who came up with the idea would be the first to give huge credit to the insight and strategy, developed by Nick Kendall and the BBH planning team.♦

As the great Jeremy Bullmore has said "In creating advertising, we need to be intuitive, instinctive, scared and lucky. And we need to be rigorous, disciplined, logical and deductive....."

The Johnnie Walker success story is proof that both are essential

Rob Malcolm, former President, Global Marketing, Sales and Innovation, Diageo♠