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Challenge
To increase consideration, Chivas need to strengthen relevance among a global audience of young ambitious professionals. They know Chivas is a good quality whisky, but think it’s “a brand I’ll enjoy when I’m older (like when I’m my Dad’s age)”. We had to find a way to turn the long-running ‘Live With Chivalry’ campaign into a more modern, culturally relevant and talk-worthy engagement platform.

Solution
Our strategy was to apply ‘Chivalry’ to the world of business, re-defining ‘success’ as being able to turn profit and make a positive impact on the world.

Activity
We developed a new engagement platform called ‘The Venture’ to inspire and enable an aspiring generation of young professionals to use business as a force for good. The hub for this platform was The Venture global website, that could be customised for each participating Chivas market.
The Venture was backed by a $1million fund for social entrepreneurs with business ideas that turn a profit and make a difference to the world. The fund was part allocated by the public, who could vote for their favourite business idea on the website. The other part of the fund was allocated by an expert panel including the Chairman & CEO of Pernod Ricard, the Founding Editor of Co.Exist for Fast Company, the Founding Executive Director of the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation, and also Adam Grenier, the award-winning actor in HBO hit Entourage and successful social entrepreneur. The fund was allocated using the global crowdfunding site Indiegogo, so that all the social businesses that took part in The Venture had an opportunity to raise additional support from the internet.
The Venture also published a large volume and high quality of editorial and video content every week to inspire our young ambitious professionals. The content was created in partnership with Fast Company, with the subject matter ranging from interviews and business book summaries to start-up advice and new business profiles. This content was published from the website out to social channels and paid media partnerships.
The platform was launched by a high-profile ad campaign starring Chiwetel Ejiofor OBE and Oscar Isaac, created by Havas Worldwide.

Result
In total 16 local markets activated the platform and the launch campaign attracted over 17 million video views, with strong share rates. The rich editorial articles, snackable social media content as well as real-time video streaming through Google Hangouts and Periscope all ensured incredible engagement levels. We’ve seen over half a million unique users to The Venture website, with a quarter of those revisiting the site again. The average time spent on the site is over 3 minutes, significantly above the average for alcohol brand websites. One in ten visitors views editorial content on the site, which we’ve managed to maintain since launch. We've also seen substantial viewer retention across all 42 Venture videos on YouTube, at an average of 92%. This equates to an average view time of 52 seconds.
There were over 1000 entries to the fund. If you consider that an entry requires a 40 question form, in order to assess financial background of entrepreneurs and a detailed analysis of their business plan, this figure is quite extraordinary. Of those, 400 were shortlisted and 16 were selected to pitch at the global final in Silicon Valley in July 2015. The influence of The Venture goes far beyond marketing performance stats, as all these businesses have the potential to change the world.
Our work caught the attention of the marketing industry, winning multiple accolades, including the Grand Prix at The Drum Content Awards.
Anna Watkins, Managing Director at Guardian Labs and a judge at The Drum Content Awards, said: “Throughout the judging, one entry really stood out for its approach to content and commitment to delivering a project at scale. Extremely well thought through and executed, The Venture not only provided a fantastic opportunity for entrepreneurs in developing countries to get funding but also reams of helpful information and advice that could help them develop and sustain their projects. All in a completely 'content first' platform, that lived in local languages, with real local relevance.”