The Situation
Jack Daniel’s had a growing issue with specialness, partly caused by its own success — with 13 million cases sold, the brand’s ubiquity was quietly working against the very differentiation that made it desirable in the first place. If Jack isn’t just a whiskey but a set of values, then people were buying it for two reasons: what drinking it said about them, and what being seen drinking it told the world. Declining differentiation and growing ubiquity was weakening both sides of that equation.
The Strategy
The category was drowning in things that felt “overly manufactured — carefully stage managed, spun and with little substance.” In response, people were craving things that felt genuinely real, drawn to symbols of authenticity in a world increasingly dominated by mass production. Mr Wolf found Jack Daniel’s answer already sitting in the product itself: every single drop of Jack Daniel’s — 151 years after the distillery first opened — still comes from one place, and one place only: Lynchburg, Tennessee. No shortcuts, no outsourcing, no mass-production compromise. It’s always real with Jack, because it’s never been made anywhere else.
The Creative
The insight drove “The Journey” — the idea that every bottle of Jack sold in Australia has already travelled an extraordinary distance just to get here: through the original iron-free spring water, four days dripping through ten feet of hard maple charcoal, years maturing in new American oak barrels crafted in Jack’s own cooperage, then over 9,600 miles from Lynchburg to Australia. Rather than dramatise any single part of that process, the campaign told the whole story under the line “Every Drop From A Single Source,” across OOH, print and digital executions — shot on location in Lynchburg to capture the real thing rather than recreate it.
The Results
Following the campaign launch Jack Daniel’s Australia delivered impressive growth, including:
- Underlying net sales in Australia grew 7% in the first half of fiscal 2019
- Jack Daniel’s maintained its position as the number-one most valuable spirits trademark in Australia
- 10% year-on-year increase in underlying net sales for Australia by March 2018
- Solidified Australia as the brand’s third-largest market worldwide, trailing only US and UK
The Reaction
“It’s great to be working with the team at Mr Wolf on a campaign as pivotal as this. Throughout the pitch process they demonstrated a deep understanding of our brand, and we’ve loved putting those skills to the test in developing the ‘Every Drop’ campaign together.” Natalia Kowalczyk, Senior Brand Manager, Jack Daniel’s
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