Analysis of the new Glenmorangie website

Posted on November 3, 2007
Filed Under Highlands, Whisky Advertising, Whisky websites, WhiskyBuzz |

Some time ago last week Glenmorangie opened the doors to their new website that has been redesigned and restructured following the new overall brand profile.

My expectations has been high since Glenmorangie clearly has stated that they are intending to move their positioning even more towards luxury. Apart from that I also have a personal interest in following up Glenmorangie.com About 6 month ago my agency was invited to pitch for the assignment to redesign Glenmorangie.com. I was of course very excited, but then in the middle of the pitch Glenmorangie decided to withdraw the pitch because of timings. Instead the told us the would continue using the agency they already worked with. Bummer.

So, now it’s live and what do I think?

Overall impression
I do think that Glenmorangie has delivered quite a good Idea for the overall concept of the site. The “reveal” idea works well with what whisky is all about. However I don’t think the site matches the “luxury” positioning. Just like the new Balblair site, this site has focused to much on heavy interactions and as a result of that they have had to compress images and other graphical building blocks to much and the site feels blurry and cheap. The whisky business should take some learnings from the traditional luxury (Since Glenmorangie is owned by LVMH they should have done their homework) brands such as Dior, Gucci, Rolex or even Rolls Royce

The content.
Overall the new site consists of three sections. Glenmorangie World, My Kaleidoscope & Expressions. The idea for the site seems to be “Reveal”. What ever you do on the site, it is always about “revealing” something.

The Glenmorangie World consists of the traditional content. Advertising, Glenmorangie House, Awards, Evolution, Provenance, People & A to Z of Glenmorangie…basically what every other whisky brand have about their brand.

My Kaleidoscope is the part that is the most innovative about the site. Glenmorangie has provided it’s visitors with a tool for finding the perfect match for your own tast. The tool that graphically is highly inspired by…eh..a kaleidoscope lets you pick between 8 different expressions such as Luscious & Tropical, Velvety & Sumptuous and more. However, I wonder how many people actually know if they want a Glenmorangie expression that is…stimulating & zesty. Added to the complexity is the fact that you have to combine at least 5 different expressions before you can be provided with a suggestion. But, I do like the fact that they have tried something new.

Last but not least. Expressions. This is where you get a good overview of the entire Glenmorangie range. It’s simple, informative and easy to use. As I wrote above I’m a little bit sad about the quality of the imagery. I would have liked much higher resolution and larger images. But that might be on it’s way, who knows.

To sum it up. I think the new Glenmorangie site ads some value to the world of whisky but I’m sad that they didn’t take the opportunity to make something special. I especially lack video content. There is so much more you could have done with that. Experimentation with “blog this”, rss feeds, you tube content, flickr implementations, distrubuted content towards us bloggers, podcasts etc would have been welcomed. But, overall, a nice site.

Visit the site here