Ballantine’s, a Scotch whisky brand from Pernod Ricard’s Chivas Brothers, is celebrating 10 years of its True Music platform, which has showcased over 800 artists and hosted events in 32 countries. The platform sees the spirits brand leaning on popular culture to deepen its connection with consumers, an approach that continues to evolve, including via workshops and a foray into e-sports.
True Music is one of the longest-running brand-led music platforms globally, per Ballantine’s. An online back-catalog of content boasts over 9 million views and has helped cement the brand’s “Stay True” positioning. Three years ago, the platform spawned True Music Studios, which brings workshops, educational events and community experiences to the mix.
A key element of True Music is a partnership with online music broadcaster Boiler Room, which has helped Ballantine’s to integrate itself into the global music scene. To celebrate a decade of working together, the duo has planned 10 live performances around the world this year that will be broadcast for broad reach.
While aligning itself with music has been a success for Ballantine’s, it is not the brand’s only attempt to align with popular culture. The marketer has also partnered with popular video game Borderlands on a marketing campaign and game integration. Such tie-ups are another way of bringing value to consumers, according to Ballantine’s Global Head of Music Partnerships Tom Elton.
Marketing Dive spoke with Elton on how music plays into Ballantine’s marketing strategy and the future of its pop culture activations.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
MARKETING DIVE: How did Ballantine’s decide to craft a global music strategy with True Music?
TOM ELTON: It all started with our markets. In South America, they're sponsoring the Tiesto gigs. In Spain, they're doing these 360 partnerships; in Russia, they would do rock music, and some are good, some are bad. But they're all inconsistent. It was all about harmonizing together, tracing a global platform with one forward momentum. True Music has been presenting and representing local music on a global stage since 2014. That's what it's been about.
Music is the largest passion point for our mates. It's growing year on year. Music is a passion point in every market in the world. And their market, our markets, were already investing within music. So that was a no-brainer for us to go in that direction back in 2014. Also, music and alcohol go hand in hand. There is a natural role for us to bring value.
How is Ballantine’s connection to music evolving with the more recent introduction of True Music Studios?
ELTON: Let's go from start to finish, what's going to be the experience? What would they want? How do we add value? What they're gonna see from start to finish. One of the key things about True Music is about being inclusive. So it's about, not just showing a window into all these different music scenes, but also making sure that people can watch it for free from home.
We often do limited-edition bottles. We do merchandise for sure. What we don't just do anymore is we don't just do music shows. So, True Music Studios is about the positive impact you can make by engaging the whole community. It's not just the performance. Whilst that is always the bit that garners the biggest interest from fans, we will always be seen as a product sponsor for that because the music is the product of the artists, it's not our product, we've got no role there.
What we do is we have panel talks. We have marketplaces where we invite local communities to come sell products. We have all sorts of things, we have a whiskey night. So we've made it much more of a community outreach, much more of a broader play than just a single music event in one single genre.
How does “Stay True” tie back to what you’re doing with True Music?
“Stay True” is all about encouraging people to be themselves despite external expectation or pressure on judgment. Stay true to yourself, irrespective of others thoughts and beliefs. What we've done with music is a proof point to what we say as a brand. It shows that we're not just all talk, we have substance as well.
Why is connecting to pop culture important for Ballantine’s?
Elton: We understood 10 years ago that as a brand, to win over people, you can't just do your mass brand comms and just tell them what your brand is about. People are more cynical, the trust is lower. Any brand can talk, but you need to act as well. So that's where we built our music platform.
Starting from music we've gotten into gaming, but that's the role of a culture platform. It is to act as a proof point to “Stay True,” strive for credibility and recommendation for our products. We've always believed in that because people expect brands to add value to their communities. And it's one of the main reasons that they pick brands, if it adds value to the world that they live within. We knew that from the very early days, that's how we got into music. That's why we're going into gaming.
Say who and what you are. Back it up with talk. And then when it comes to sales, have something interesting in the last three feet that links it all together in one tidy ecosystem.
How do gaming and e-sports match to this strategy and expand it at the same time?
We don't go and target music fans, music's too big, too subjective. Same as gaming. Campaign by campaign we engage with a specific community. When we have a limited-edition bottle, it's not for profit, or for sales. It's about bringing upfront naturally into our campaign, making it a talking point, and giving fans something of value via our bottle. Most recent ones we've done on gaming, and on the back of those packs, the scannable QR codes that gives people the last redeemable skin updates for the Borderlands game. It's something massively of value to that community. First-party data collection is obviously always really important, so we're going to continue to engage with fans and give them news and updates about things that they want to hear about.
