Page 8 - Drambuie case study

Norman MacKinnon

Malcolm MacKinnon’s son Norman became Managing

Director and continued to drive the marketing of Drambuie.

The MacKinnon family was very aware of preserving the

valuable link with Prince Charles Edward Stuart and Scottish

heritage in general. In the US, during the 1950s in particular,

Drambuie's popularity was boosted when 'Rat Pack' actors

such as Frank Sinatra began drinking Rusty Nail, a

combination of Scotch, Drambuie and lemon. By the 1970s

Drambuie was selling 750,000 cases with 400,000 going to

the US, all produced at a site opened in 1969 outside

Edinburgh. During this era of changing fashions and

contemporary popular culture marketing became a strategic

tool.

The 1980s saw a reversal in the fortunes for Drambuie.

Sales, which in the mid-1970s had peaked at 750,000 cases,

began to fall; this at a time when unrelated diversification

was the chosen growth strategy. Elements such as Caithness

glass, producer of crystal glassware, Cockburn’s of Leith and

Innes and Grieve, wine merchants, had been added to the

portfolio along with Glenvarigill, luxury car dealership

founded in 1966.