A Study on the Creativity of Domestic Whisky Advertising

-Focused on the Newspaper Advertisement-

Submitted by Oh, Young-Deok(Major in Advertisement Design Dept. of Industrial Design Graduate School of Industrial Art Hong Ik University)

The history of bottled whisky in Korea, which traces back to only twenty years ago, is almost impossible to be compared with that of Europe or the U.S. Therefore, it may be natural to say that the product quality of Korean whiskies and their marketing strategy still remain at the incubation stage. With the opening of Korean alcoholic beverage market, however, greater efforts are required than ever before in the fields of developing high quality products and acquiring advanced marketing know-hows to enhance the competitiveness of domestic whiskies.

The biggest problem found in Korean whisky advertising is that it still fails to overcome the outdated style, of the seventies, which largely focused on explaining features and specifications of a product. That was because most of the brands had relatively short life span and, hence, advertising agencies were not able to develop long-term strategy for a brand. Agencies have paid most attention to notifying the births of brands. The lack of positive efforts for better advertising of the both sides of clients and agencies can also be listed as one of the reasons for such poor performance. Evasive attitude toward introducing various new ideas does no good for the development of advertising. In terms of creative, whisky advertisements have also lacked their identity which is vital for securing accumulation effects.

Baby boomers in their thirties and forties constitute largest portion of whisky consumers in Korea. They are expected to play an important role in leading Korean whisky market to enter mature stage, as they did in introducing mass consumption era. In that sense, every effort should be made to find a way to understand their life style and way of thinking.

In order to produce high quality advertising, whisky manufacturers themselves should have a long-term vision and strong affection for advertising. Only when various approaches are taken to elicit good will over a brand from consumers, Korean whisky advertising will be able to enter a whole new stage.