The Glen Grant
Exploration Series launch
- ORGANIC SOCIAL - ART DIRECTION - TOV DEVELOPMENT -
Context:
To launch The Glen Grant’s Exploration Series, the brand needed a social identity that could reflect the craft of the product and appeal to a more culturally curious, younger audience.
My role was to develop the storytelling and art direction for this product launch, as well as the tone of voice guidelines for the brand as a whole for social.
The Insight:
This Whisky is made by building up layers - each cask and ingredient adds depth and character.
The Creative Approach:
Much like the Exploration series’s complex layers of flavour, our life experiences add depth and richness to who we are.
Over time, we all become a unique blend, shaped by the places we’ve been, the people we’ve met, and the moments that changed us. They give us complexity, vibrancy and character.
Rather than simply explaining the craft, I used this layering approach as a metaphor. This gave us a clear creative direction, translating the process of whisky making into a more emotional, human way of seeing the world.
It allowed us to move away from just technical explanation into something more expressive, rooted in memory, travel and experience.
Art Direction:
The initial moodboard was built upon exploration visuals that focused on details and sensory experiences.
The visual language and design brief was built around the idea of layering - not just as a stylistic device, but as a way to express what the whisky embodies and represents to the brand.
By combining textures, landscapes, light and observational moments into layered compositions, we created imagery that felt like a sensory experience and evoked taste, place and memory.
This approach to building the product world allowed the launch to move beyond the category tropes, into an identity that reflected the brand’s values of exploration, travel and globally sourced ingredients - giving the whisky a richer, more cultural context.
The results was a distinctive, premium identity that made the whisky feel like an experience, not just a product.
Tone of Voice Development:
The Glen Grant had no defined social voice.
I built tov attributes for the ‘Major’s’ voice, the explorer who founded The Glen Grant:
Curious: Travelled, but not showy about it. Notices what others overlook.
Charming: Wry, lightly irreverent, never trying too hard.
Meticulous: Obsessed with detail. Because the best things are built from what most people miss.
Lightly Eccentric: A slightly unexpected way of seeing and expressing the world. Rooted in intelligence, not performed for attention.
I defined the brand POV as:
Exploration isn’t distance. It’s depth.
Travel doesn’t just take you places. It teaches you what to notice.
So The Glen Grant shouldn’t just document travel. It should interpret it.
Tasked with launching The Exploration Range, I started crafting a distinctive TOV, using The ‘Major’ as a lens for all post copy:
Bottle tease