Location: West Coast of Scotland
Total Funding Awarded: £24,400

"The fund has allowed us to create new relationships and has proved an excellent learning curve for us all. We work more closely with local suppliers, which has been a real benefit to us and them."
Nicky Murphy, West Coast Whisky

West Coast Whisky Trail comprises 15 distilleries, 20 associate members and 5 tour and travel operator related members. The Trail is a high quality, year-round whisky/tourism initiative with the goal to create a sustainable malt whisky trail, educate consumers about the delights of malt whisky and to attract high spending visitors to the west coast of Scotland. Nicky Murphy who has been managing the project gives us some insight into her Growth Fund experience.

THE CREATIVE SPARK

“It was Douglas Davidson of Arran Distillery who first contacted Bruichladdich about creating a West Coast Whisky Trail as a year-round, high quality tourism initiative. They went so far down the line and then approached Highlands & Islands Enterprise (HIE). We worked out how much private funding we could achieve and sought the additional funding needed from HIE and Growth Fund.

FROM INSPIRATION TO REALITY

Our group brings a wealth of experience and different perspectives to the table. One member is neither a distiller not an association member so helps us see the bigger picture. Another is responsible for five distilleries in the area as part of a large conglomerate, while another is from a small independent distillery. We also work with local suppliers, who benefit from association with a high quality product and themselves act as the extra pieces in our marketing jigsaw.

We started off by creating a corporate identity for the whisky trail, as well as a dedicated website with links to other whisky promotions. This worked alongside a flyer and brochure for general distribution. All these are front end costs so cash flow is something to keep an eye on.

In addition to the design and print aspects, the fund also helped appoint a PR agency early on to work with key international media and help establish awareness of the trail among our main target audiences. The aim was to maximise exposure of the Trail, generate as much PR from the launch as possible and to create promotions to drive visitors to the website and onto the Trail itself.

We also undertook direct mailings to whisky clubs worldwide, ran joint promotions with tour operators and VisitScotland and created a Whisky Passport. The postcard we used for this direct mail can be sent as a postcard as well, this has proved very effective so far.  

We got a project manager on board who had experience of Growth Funding, their experience made the process of applying fairly easy. Our associate members are so busy, it’s good to have someone to keep things moving along and meet deadlines. We send our associate members our press releases and contact them every two weeks about what we’re doing in terms of whisky-tasting, tasting sessions, competitions and PR.

Our project was supposed to be launched in September – November 2006 but the official launch ended up being 12th April 2007. As a result we were late spending the money and had only a few months to spend it by the end of July. There was lots of activity very quickly.

THE REAL BOOST

So far we’ve only tapped into a bit of VisitScotland’s expertise. We ran a competition with them in their July newsletter with a good whisky-related prize. The resulting entries have helped build our database. In the coming year we plan to attend exhibitions with VisitScotland, produce newsletters and create local TIC displays.  

PR coverage of £1/2 million advertising equivalent was gained thanks to the efforts of our PR agency and website hits were also impressive. Elsewhere figures were gained from foot fall at distilleries and heads on beds from accommodation providers. We’re looking to further improve the monitoring situation for next year.