Jameson Irish Whiskey's Marketing Team Communication

INDIVIDUAL BUSINESS REPORT-JAMESON MARKETING

Executive Summary:

In this report, I will study and analyse Jameson Irish Whiskey’s marketing team and how they communicate with their stakeholders (particularly their potential customers). I will firstly define communication and explain the importance of using communication in a business. I will analyse Jameson’s “Sine Metu” campaign and explain how it works well at communicating with potential customers. I will then talk about Jameson’s successful use of social media as a marketing tool and I will consider what they do to use it successfully in communicating with stakeholders. I will then make one recommendation to Jameson on how I think they could improve their communications with their stakeholders.

Section 1:

In this report, I am going to talk about the way “Jameson Irish Whiskey” communicates with its stakeholders. They have a full marketing team employed exclusively to engage with possible consumers. This team is very effective in marketing their product with consumers and I will discuss and analyse their methods of doing so.

Section 2:

Marketing whiskey is quite difficult in Ireland due to Ireland’s strict alcohol advertising codes. However, Jameson have created the “Sine Metu” campaign to great effect while still staying within the constraints of these codes. “Sine Metu” is Jameson’s family motto and literally translates to “without fear” and it is printed on every bottle they produce. The aim of this campaign is to encourage their stakeholders to take a risk every now and then and enjoy themselves by indulging in this product. “We believe that when we fear a bit less, we live a bit more. We laugh more, meet more people, experience new things. As a company, it means we’re open to new possibilities, new neighbourhoods, new ways of making whiskey.” (Jameson 2017).

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The way the motto is in Latin is very effective in adding a certain amount of sophistication to the brand also. This feature of sophistication gathers a larger market as the people who want more “classy” drinks will be drawn in by it. This motto originates from when the founder, John Jameson, was awarded it for his bravery in fighting pirates off the coast of Scotland. This historical aspect to the motto is also very powerful in staying true to the roots of the brand. It is very important to stay true to their roots as it also adds a sense of culture to the drink which would otherwise be lacking. Potential customers would also be more likely to buy this drink over newer drinks as it reminds people that Jameson has been around for such a long time so it has had a lot of time to perfect its recipe.

These small reasons to get people to buy Jameson rather than other similar whiskeys are vital as the retail industry has a lot of similar products. The actual taste difference between these whiskeys are minimal so Jameson must offer some things that competitors can’t to justify charging slightly higher prices and still expect sales. It is uncertain if this campaign is successful yet as all advertising is not, should not, and cannot be designed to produce immediate purchases on the part of all who are exposed to it. Immediate sales results (even if measurable) are, at best, an incomplete criterion of advertising effectiveness. In other words, the effects of much advertising are much more long-term (Lavidge and Steiner 1961) so the true results are yet to be seen.

Social media is a massive part of Jameson’s interactions with its stakeholders as it encompasses a wide range of online, word-of-mouth forums including blogs, company-sponsored discussion boards and chat rooms, consumer-to-consumer e-mail, consumer product or service ratings websites and forums, Internet discussion boards and forums, moblogs (sites containing digital audio, images, movies, or photographs), and social networking websites, to name a few (Mangold and Faulds 2009) so there is a massive audience to preach to for Jameson as well as there being a large opportunity for consumers to speak between themselves. Jameson also utilises social media to great effect. It has more than 57,300 followers on Instagram, 41,500 subscribers on YouTube and over 2 million likes on Facebook. http://digiday.com/marketing/right-amount-craic-inside-jamesons-social-strategy/. With the reach and community influence, participation in social media marketing is the new fifth P of marketing (Tuten and Solomon 2014). This shows us the importance it is for modern companies to communicate with its stakeholders using social media. There are over 250 million people that have active profiles on Facebook. More than 364 million people read blogs, 14 million people are registered Twitter users and YouTube has more than 100 million viewers per month. There is more reach than ever before, hence, the opportunities in social media marketing are greater than ever before (Zarrella 2009).

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We were lucky enough as students studying the Digital Innovation Creativity & Enterprise module to hear from Aisling Tobin (Jameson Brand Manager in Pernod Ricard) in the “Get Social” conference on 14^th February 2017. She had a very interesting speech to give us. She showed us how much work goes into social media marketing. One thing I found particularly interesting was Jameson’s method of keeping stakeholders interested outside of peak times by putting up quizzes on social media. This keeps users of the brand interested and engaged with the brand even when they are not drinking. One of Jameson’s main weaknesses is the lack of sales midweek and that is why keeping stakeholders engaged during these times is pivotal. Her analogy of how they decide on what they post to social media was interesting as she said that content is King and engagement is Queen. This shows us that they really consider what they post as they want it to be informative, however, there is a fine line between being informative and being boring. Also, it is pointless in posting good quality content if potential customers don’t engage with it so they must keep it interesting and give stakeholders a reason to watch/read it. It is important also to manage any unhappy customers as on social media dissatisfied customers can protest out loud, attainment many other customers easily and damaging the brand’s image.

One critique I would have of Jameson’s communications with its stakeholders is that it hasn’t taken full advantage of snapchat yet. With 158 million daily active users and 2.5 billion snaps per day (DRM 2017), there are huge opportunities available to advertise to a massive number of people.

Section 3:

There isn’t a lot of recommendations I would make to Jameson as there marketing team are doing a very good job already of communicating with its stakeholders. The one small thing I would put more emphasis on though is snapchat due to the potential reach they may have there.

However, Jameson recorded its 27th consecutive year of growth for the year ending June 2016, with the whiskey now representing almost a quarter of Pernod Ricard’s sales in the United States (Taylor 2016). This shows us that Jameson certainly is doing something right and any radical changes would be completely unnecessary.

I would advise other businesses to follow Jameson’s lead on many things though, especially the emphasis they put on social media, as it has a very successful method of communicating with its stakeholders which has been proven over a long time.

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