Background

Whisky. The ultimate symbol of success, but a gender exclusive one. In culture, whisky is intrinsically linked to rich, white, heterosexual men, an image reinforced by category stereotypes. But The Glenlivet believes true equality cannot be achieved if societal representations of success are exclusive to one gender and type of person.

Idea

We identified online image search as an aggregation of cultural norms. Whilst we couldn’t change the search algorithm, we could cheat it with placement. We covertly seeded a new inclusive image bank of whisky drinkers online for six months, partnering with the most relevant blogs and publishers. So now, when you search for “whisky drinker”, you see all genders represented as well as men. Changing the face of the whisky drinker by creating a new aesthetic for the category . So that everyone feels empowered to drink whisky, no matter their gender.

Results

• Closed the gender representation gap in whisky, and in the cultural portrait of success
• + 10% year on year increment of site traffic from women
• Cheated the algorithm to get our image bank in the top search engine results
• Raised awareness about the problem: 67.43M monthly unique viewers on coverage publications including TimeOut, Evening Standard, Metro and Yahoo!