Canadian Club Serves Whisky Whisdoms to Male Fans

Canadian Club Whisky is capitalizing upon its middle name and sharing its 154 years of whisky experience via a newly created character in a campaign aimed at men.

The promotion, Join the Club, features videos on Facebook starring the so-called Canadian Club Chairman, as well as Whisky Whisdoms that, as a press release puts it, “help guys to ease their way into the whisky world.”

Join the Club launched in the U.S. about a week ago and in Canada one week prior. Aside from some differences in text, the U.S. and Canadian content will basically be the same for both pages, says Dan Cohen, senior public relations manager for Canadian Club’s parent company, Beam. In addition, the Facebook header image featuring the Chairman on each page is virtually identical with the exception of slightly different poses.

Canadian Club’s U.S. fan page has 60,000 likes; its Canadian fan page has about 47,000.

Canadian Club calls its Whisky Whisdoms “blunt, unapologetic and undeniable truths.” Examples include: “Never send beer to do a whisky’s job”; “Everything in moderation. Except bacon”; and “Drafts are best suited for fantasy football. Order a Canadian Club Whisky.”

The Whisdoms will be featured in videos as well as on Facebook and in point-of-sale materials at the retail level.

Canadian Club will have at least 100 Whisky Whisdoms over the course of the campaign, Cohen says.

“We’ve started sharing them on Facebook and plan to provide consumers with new Whisky Whisdoms throughout [2013],” Cohen says.

According to Cohen, the campaign will include a total of seven videos. The first video on the U.S. Facebook fan page was posted on November 19 and has 40 likes.

In January, Canadian Club will start running banner and video ads on AOL.com sites and partner sites like Sports Illustrated, Men’s Fitness, Dirty Jobs, ET, Reuters and the History Channel. The digital advertising campaign will run through July.

Within the next month, Canadian Club will ask its Facebook fans to submit their own Whisky Whisdoms, although there’s no reward for engagement.

Canadian Club’s target for the campaign is male whisky drinkers who “want to step up to a premium level,” as well as beer drinkers looking for alternative cocktails, Cohen says.

“Canadian Club has been around for a long time – more than 150 years – and it’s the #1 standard Canadian whisky,” Cohen says. “It has amassed so much wisdom. This is an opportunity for us to share wisdom with whisky drinkers.”

Canadian Club is also tweeting out Whisdoms from the Chairman like, “People who claim paying for your date is old fashioned don’t get second dates.” @cc_whisky has 4,200 followers.