As the world’s most awarded single malt Scotch whisky, Glenfiddich is strongly positioned as a category leader that has constantly innovated to push boundaries and challenge the status quo. To bring this brand purpose to life in a meaningful way for its audiences, Glenfiddich created the Challengers Club - an annual platform aimed at inspiring the maverick spirit into action around a deeply relevant societal challenge in South Africa.

Objectives

- Create national awareness around the 2022 Challengers Club initiative and connect audiences to “The Water Walk” through a rich storytelling experience

- Generate sustained engagement and talkability throughout the campaign period to drive audiences to the Challengers Club online platform at scale

- Deliver tangible impact through public participation in the limited-edition auction to raise funds for South African water projects

One man went on a journey that many South Africans go on every day, a journey known as “The Water Walk.” Only this time, he went further than anyone has ever had to go. Travelling over 11000 kilometres to find water that has been locked in ice for millions of years, never exposed to the pollution of humans. This he brought back to be packaged with a bottle of the world’s most awarded single malt whisky to create the purest serve in history. This world-exclusive serve was auctioned off to frenzied bidders across Africa. All desperate to be one of a tiny exclusive handful of whisky connoisseurs to taste the purest serve in history. Raising hundreds and thousands for South African Water Projects.

Critical to the success of the 2022 Challengers Club was driving participation at scale through the use of a credible voice that would enable us to build cultural relevance around “The Water Walk” story and engage a national audience in a meaningful way.

So we partnered with well-known local philanthropist and business entrepreneur, Maps Maponyane, as the face and voice of the initiative and leveraged his on-target influence and highly engaged social media community to invite audiences to follow his journey.

This approach not only allowed us to build momentum quickly, but also drove high appeal around the coveted limited-editions to be auctioned off, among both media and consumers.

“The Water Walk” campaign was rolled out in three phases over a three-month period:

- Pique interest through teaser content across our influencer and brand social media channels

- Premiere the full story and launch the limited-edition auction at an exclusive invite-only event

- Drive public participation at scale, around the online auction, through high reach PR and media communication rollout

40m reach (target: 11m)

13m views

100% positive sentiment

100% live event auction success rate

112k online auction bidders

10x earned media ROI