Whyte & Mackay's Whisky tasting on Google+

I love how people are finding interesting things to do on Google+.  The latest initiative I've seen is from Richard Paterson (aka The Nose) at the distiller Whyte & Mackay, who is going to do two whisky tastings as part of a Hangout (video conference call).

From their website:

"Who fancies a dram with me? As I mentioned the other day I'm on Google+ and one of the features on there is being able have a group video chat with other people, so I was thinking why not get together, have a dram and talk whisky?


So here's what's being proposed. We'll do one or two video hangouts on August 15 and 16 at around 7pm UK time.

Now, I'm told that Google isn't allowing brands and businesses onto Google+ yet so to avoid accusations that we're doing this to push just one brand, we'll do drams from across the ranges:

Whyte & Mackay 13 year old
Whyte & Mackay 19 year old
Jura Superstition
Jura Prophecy
Dalmore 15 year old
Here's how you can take part:

Leave your details below - name, email, country you are from and Google+ address
State if you can do either night or have a preference
We'll then get in touch to send you samples of all the drinks - seems only fair - and get ready for a drink on the night.


Now, we're going to restrict these first two events to people in the UK and mainland Europe. If they prove popular, we'll try and roll events out for whisky fans in other continents.


So who fancies a dram then?"

So far quite a few people have signed up - more than the 20-30 permitted in two sessions.  It looks like it's going to be a fun event.

When I showed this to a few colleagues one pointed out that it's a very small scale event - by definition only 20-30 people can take part.  However I think they'll get a lot more kudos from being innovative enough and agile (dread word!) enough to make this happen.

Lots of brands do small scale stunts like this - for example Kirin are opening a pop up restaurant in a few weeks time - and the benefit comes from a mix of making a small amount of people very enthusiastic, to others hearing about it.  It's good PR, and for the price of a few samples of whisky surely it's well worth it.

With Foursquare & Twitter some of the best things done by brands have been totally unofficial; wonder if the same will be true for Google+

Full story - NMA