Scotch Whisky Experience wins top visitor attraction award

One of the capital’s major tourist attractions, The Scotch Whisky Experience (SWE), has won top prize for its 30th anniversary marketing campaign at the Association of Scottish Visitor Attractions awards today.

The whisky centre celebrated their month long digital birthday message celebrating the connections between the whisky industries and tourism, and SWE’s position in both spheres.

They ran distillery bagging competitions, streamed video content from SWE alumni and whisky experts and featured alumni telling their own whisky story. Pupils from a local primary school contributed by hiding a time capsule.

Julie Trevisan-Hunter, Marketing Director at SWE said: “In order to celebrate our 30 years we decided we should treasure the wonderful relationship and sense of advocacy that has been developed with our shareholders, staff, alumni and visitors, past, present and future.

“Rather than take the traditional approach of sending out press releases about what we do and the company’s history, we decided to focus on the inspiration that everyone connected to us feels, and how they become loyal advocates of both SWE and Scotch whisky more widely.

“The support we received from the organisations we’ve worked with over the years was genuinely heart-warming and has led to us strengthening relationships across all of our target audiences”. 

Commenting on the campaign, the judges said: “This was a highly effective and unique campaign that sought to raise the profile of not only SWE but Scottish tourism and whisky world wide”.

Runners-up in the category were Edinburgh Dungeon for ‘Braveheart’s Revenge’, the launch campaign for its new William Wallace show, and RZSS’s Highland Wildlife Park for its #weehamish Campaign, which celebrated the first polar bear to be born in the UK for 25 years.

Entries for this award were open to individual attractions, or groups of attractions working together, that could demonstrate good use of marketing channels, disciplines and technology together with effective measurement of results.

ASVA Chairman Douglas Walker said: “The winning and runner-up entries are fantastic examples of forward-thinking visitor attractions that have blended traditional and viral media to create innovative campaigns that capture and excite the imagination of their target audiences”.