Cheers to FNB Whisky Live

@gdheuer

The month of November celebrated yet another highly successful FNB Whisky Live Festival in both Cape Town and Johannesburg. The event has been gaining increased interest and growing its reach since the inaugural festival held back in 2003.

Online support for Whisky Live was not as strong as the offline support but this is bound to change over the course of the next few years. BrandsEye monitored the online conversation and these are some of the results for the two events:

Cape Town

1. The Mother City generated approximately 744 mentions during the 3 days - equating to an average of 248 mentions/day.
2. This conversation allowed for 895 000 Opportunities-to-See (OTS) or be exposed to the conversation.
3. 92% of the conversation took place on Twitter.
4. 85% of the conversation had positive sentiment.

 Johannesburg

1. Jo'burg had slightly fewer mentions, coming in with 673 mentions - equating to an average of 224 mentions/day.
2. Notwithstanding the decreased volume in conversation, the Jo'burg conversation allowed for 1.2 million OTS.
3. Twitter was yet again the most spoken on platform with 88% of all mentions.
4. 96% of the conversation was positive.

The volumes achieved on both events are nearly half the number of mentions that a single prominent, international whisky brand receives in an entire month in South Africa. This is tremendous exposure for two 3 day events and could justify a continued sponsorship.

Premium brands can be encouraged by the knowledge that consumers of high quality products, or in this case a high quality experience accompanied by high quality products, are taking their offline experiences and moving the conversation online. There were numerous consumers who were engaging with some of the whisky producers on Twitter prior to the event and who would then initiate an offline conversation with the brand and/or individual at the actual event. Some even blogged about it afterwards

It is also interesting to note that Johannesburg, regardless of its low volumes, has further reach. This means that it has far more credible sources which might not have spoken as often as their Cape Town compatriots.

For those who sponsor these events, identifying a location is often of paramount importance and therefore there might sometimes need to be a high volume/low credibility vs. low volume/high credibility trade-off that needs to be considered when choosing an event location/destination depending on the purpose of the event.

The growth that the brand has experienced over the past few years has allowed the Whisky Live Festival to create a top quality experience that is starting to have an online and offline legacy. With continued success this event is experiencing, it seems to me as if the Whisky Live Festival is here to stay. Cheers to that.

GH