Scapa
The Spirit of Orkney
Insight
Island whiskies play on the same tropes. Jagged rocks. Harsh elements. Moody clouds. Crashing waves. It’s all very dark, very serious and very dramatic. That works fine for most, but it makes it difficult for your typical whisky drinker to differentiate one brand from another. But Scapa’s different. Where most island whiskies are rich and smoky, Scapa is distinctively unpeated and uncharacteristically light, fruity, and delicate The whisky speaks for itself. But nobody’s listening. So we had to give them a reason to.
Challenge
We had one simple challenge: make Scapa the most interesting island whisky. We said simple, not easy. Orkney is an anomaly in and of itself, but it isn’t exclusively ownable to Scapa. We needed to tap into what makes Scapa unique. We needed to cut through the category sameness by presenting Scapa as the antithesis to what whisky drinkers have come to expect from an island single malt. We needed to tell rich, moving, authentic stories of people, place and product that only Scapa can claim.
Change
Starting at the very core of the brand heart, we developed a whole new brand world for Scapa to play in. Inspired by the calm of the Scapa flow, we positioned Scapa as a sanctuary amid the chaos, an inviting outlier that celebrates the pursuit of self-discovery and transformation. With people, place, product and process all woven into the same narrative, we relaunched and reframed Scapa, taking it from the classic and conventional space it had been and into a new elevated and contemporary terrain. There might be other whiskies. There are even other Orcadian whiskies. But there’s only one that truly embodies the Spirit of Orkney.
Insight
Island whiskies play on the same tropes. Jagged rocks. Harsh elements. Moody clouds. Crashing waves. It’s all very dark, very serious and very dramatic. That works fine for most, but it makes it difficult for your typical whisky drinker to differentiate one brand from another. But Scapa’s different. Where most island whiskies are rich and smoky, Scapa is distinctively unpeated and uncharacteristically light, fruity, and delicate The whisky speaks for itself. But nobody’s listening. So we had to give them a reason to.
Challenge
We had one simple challenge: make Scapa the most interesting island whisky. We said simple, not easy. Orkney is an anomaly in and of itself, but it isn’t exclusively ownable to Scapa. We needed to tap into what makes Scapa unique. We needed to cut through the category sameness by presenting Scapa as the antithesis to what whisky drinkers have come to expect from an island single malt. We needed to tell rich, moving, authentic stories of people, place and product that only Scapa can claim.
Change
Starting at the very core of the brand heart, we developed a whole new brand world for Scapa to play in. Inspired by the calm of the Scapa flow, we positioned Scapa as a sanctuary amid the chaos, an inviting outlier that celebrates the pursuit of self-discovery and transformation. With people, place, product and process all woven into the same narrative, we relaunched and reframed Scapa, taking it from the classic and conventional space it had been and into a new elevated and contemporary terrain. There might be other whiskies. There are even other Orcadian whiskies. But there’s only one that truly embodies the Spirit of Orkney.
