Westland Distillery

At its core, this was a storytelling challenge: finding the narrative which would engage a wide set of venues and their customers, without losing the essence of what makes Westland special. Through in-depth interviews with industry experts and extensive immersion into the brand we set about exploring the product and, most importantly, the audience. This enabled us to identify the key success criteria for engaging decision-makers in hotel and restaurants, whilst pinpointing the key messages to emphasise in our work.

We learned from our research that Westland’s current wilderness-driven brand world didn’t translate easily into the bar world on its own. Bar teams just didn’t have the words to translate it into terms consumers could understand. What was clear from the research was that a simplified message was needed, and that place was the key. Westland’s location in the Pacific Northwest connects everything they do – a terroir that’s closer to Scotland’s than other ‘American Whiskeys’; the coffee, wine and brewing influence on their processes; the sense of duty towards the land; the determination to do things differently. This insight underpinned our strategy and core idea “The Taste of the West” – a brilliantly simple line which connected the dots on the solution we created, and which offered a simple, memorable phrase to describe the product.

We designed seven signature cocktail serves, emphasising the core ‘Taste of the West’ message and other aspects, whilst applying the product to approachable and delicious cocktails. The ‘Ritual Serve’ – a straight dram of Westland Flagship, served with a bowl of trail mix, acted both to connect consumers to the rugged landscape of the West, whilst highlighting the tasting notes within the whiskey. Cocktails included the Westland Coffee, a take on an Espresso Martini, emphasising Seattle’s coffee culture; and the Pacific Old Fashioned, which uses a stout syrup, highlighting the influence of brewing methods on Westland’s production processes.

We produced eight short films, featuring Ryan Chetiyawardana (Mr Lyan) to introduce the product and each of the cocktails, using Ryan’s voice and influence within the bar world to lend additional emphasis and credibility. We designed and built a new, trade-facing online toolkit www.bartenderfieldguide.com to hold the content, to be used by Remy Cointreau as a sales tool, and by venues themselves for information, inspiration and training.