Christian Lachel: Authentic Brand Engagement at Johnnie Walker Princes Street

Charlie Melcher:

Hi, I’m Charlie Melcher, founder of the Future of Storytelling. Welcome back to the FoST Podcast.

Factory tours and company history museums have long been staples of brand-led immersive experiences, but the genre is sorely in need of a reboot towards something more participatory, personalized, and emotionally engaging. That’s where an agency like BRC Imagination Arts comes in. For over 40 years, BRC has been at the forefront of experiential development with a particular eye towards story-driven brand and cultural experiences that are authentic, innovative, and transformational. They’ve won over 400 awards for their work and have collaborated with brands like Disney, Coca-Cola, and Volkswagen to name just a few. With over two decades of experience at BRC, our guest today has a long history of creating brand experiences that stand out as particularly immersive and engaging. Chief Creative officer and longtime friend of FoST Christian Lachel has worked on some incredible examples of fresh, forward-thinking corporate and cultural destinations, places like NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and of course Johnnie Walker Princes Street in Edinburgh, Scotland. The FoST Explorers Club recently had the privilege of getting a private tour of the Johnnie Walker experience to learn firsthand how the cutting edge of brand experiences is evolving to become more interactive, more personalized, and ultimately more effective at building enduring relationships with customers.

Christian is one of the people at the forefront of driving this evolution, and I couldn’t be more excited to share our conversation with you. Please join me in welcoming Christian Lachel.

Christian, welcome to the FoST podcast.

Christian Lachel:

Thank you very much, Charlie. It’s great to see you and be here.

Charlie Melcher:

So glad to have you with me. I wanted to start by saying how much I enjoyed going to the Johnnie Walker experience in Edinburgh. Congratulations on helping to create that.

Christian Lachel:

Yeah, thank you. It was such a joy to put that together with the team from Diageo and Johnnie Walker brand and so many people who played a hand in it. We’re really proud of the work there, and it’s been great to see the response from many visitors from all over the world.

Charlie Melcher:

I’ll be honest that I am always drawn to corporate immersive experiences. I’m always curious— I mean, as a kid, I used to love going to factory tours and yet often I’m really disappointed. I think I’m disappointed sometimes when I go to these because I feel like they’re too emphasizing selling or pushing their company, their product and not thoughtful enough about the guest experience, and I found the Johnnie Walker experience to be fabulous because it just felt like I was being treated well and respected in the journey. So I’d love to hear more about the origins of it. Where did that project originate?

Christian Lachel:

The origin of the Johnnie Walker experience in Edinburgh, and it was really linked to a pretty ambitious plan by Diageo and all of the Scottish brand homes. In Scotland, a lot of the economy is driven by the whiskey industry. It’s a fairly significant part of the export industry of Scotland in addition to great seafood and other great cultural things that we all love, but it’s a very important part of the economy and part of the tourism economy as well. And it was 185 million pound investment into Scottish tourism and into the investment of these stories, which when you really get under the hood here are about people and place and culture and not just the liquid. The liquid is part of that, but it’s really these communities across Scotland and they really wanted to, I think, lead the way in terms of finding a new path forward in the market, but it was also linked to the 200th anniversary of Johnnie Walker, which I think became the catalyst for this relook at Scotland.

Charlie Melcher:

So describe for our listeners, what is the Johnnie Walker experience?

Christian Lachel:

So Johnnie Walker Princes Street is eight floors of experiences and spaces that really help to engage and bring to life the story of Johnnie Walker in addition to other things. So in this sort of conversion of what was an old department store in the west end of Edinburgh, starting with the ground floor, of course being on Princes Street, which is the high street, the retail street in Edinburgh, and so we wanted to make sure that we had ground floor retail that was really going to be accessible to everybody. You didn’t have to have a ticket. The main tour was Journey of Flavor, which was really our more entry level or sort of overview of Johnnie Walker that would allow us to bring more people into the category and that would take up a series of floors. In addition to that though, in the basement we have a maturation space, which was the first maturation of whiskey in the city center in a long, long time.

That matured whiskey that’s finished on site is then sold in the retail, so we have exclusive bottlings that happen out of that. There’s a whole innovation lab in that space because the equipment needed to do these really advanced cocktails and drinks and blends. You need specialized equipment and often it’s too expensive for somebody to have in a home kit or even bars can’t afford all of it. We also have on one of the floors an archive experience. So 200 years of history, that was important because some people love the history and they really want go deeper. We have two bars on the rooftop. We’ve got one that is more cocktail and food focused, that’s the 1820 bar with beautiful views that look out over to the castle, the Edinburgh castle. And then we have the Explorers Bothy, which is this other bar that’s really focused on– whiskey focused, really, around the blends and the different variants that Diageo has from across all their distilleries.

And if that wasn’t enough, there is actually another experience. There’s a live venue, a live entertainment venue where we do events, including the BAFTA awards were happening there when we were in town last, and they do a lot of work with the Fringe, so there were performances part of the Fringe. We wanted to make sure the community theater was brought back to the West End. Because such a big part of the ethos of Edinburgh is the Fringe, performance has to be there. And then there’s a VIP experience that people aren’t allowed to see and we’re not allowed to talk about, and it’s unbelievable. It’s unbelievable. So there’s a lot In that space.

Charlie Melcher:

I mean, I also just love that idea that there are these layers like an onion that you peel back and there’s different things for different levels of engagement with the product and the brand. One of the things that I loved when we came in was the experience of figuring out our own personal taste profile and there was an iPad and there were questions and you helped us identify our palettes. Can you tell us about that?

Christian Lachel:

Yeah, really… I love that story. I encouraged the team that we—of course we had an amazing team working on all this— to think about putting yourselves in other people’s shoes. That begins with a challenge that I gave to the brand when we first started. My mom ran a restaurant and bar in the Chicagoland area, and she’s not a whiskey fan, and the entire time we were going through this experience and developing it, I wanted to find a way for her to experience things. And then that, of course was a rally cry for all of us to think about it from each of our own perspectives of the person in their life that may be a newcomer or somebody who may not have a first great experience with whiskey.

And then the unlock happened in two ways. One was we were sitting with Jim Beveridge— his name is really Jim Beveridge. He’s now retired, but he was the master blender. And when Jim started talking, he talked about flavor and he said, everyone’s is very different. You may have a blend that you like or whiskey that you enjoy, and other people may in the same group may have something completely different. And he did a lot of personalized whiskey blending for people, and that was like, okay, wait a second. If this is really about flavor, and everybody’s flavor and palette is different, is there a way to almost be like— put Jim in the room and find a way that we could find the perfect kind of moment or taste, first taste that was going to really align with your preferences? And everyone’s different?

The second part of the unlock was that we went into the innovation labs with Johnnie Walker and with Diageo, and they were working on this technology called Flavor Print. It was something they had been starting the trial in the online program, which was allowing you to sort of maybe select a whiskey. All of a sudden we found ourselves with this platform, this digital, which was basically an AI platform, Flavor Print, that allowed us to think about the different questions that would get us to a very close precision point on your specific preferences. So that was really key to be able to go, how do we do mass customization or mass personalization, in an experience that you’re serving hundreds of thousands of visitors a year?

Charlie Melcher:

You ask a series of questions that we answer on the tablet, and from that, it identifies you as one of eight or 10 different flavor profile…?

Christian Lachel:

Yeah, so what we decided to do, the real deep flavor wheel is quite extensive in the world of scotch. I mean it’s really, really like 50, 60 different combinations. So we decided to use six instead. We took the 40 or 50 and we combined ’em into six flavor profiles that were really linked to flavors that are developed in the early part of the whiskey making process and flavors that were linked to more of the maturation process. So we have six different flavor profiles, which you then get a wristband based on that.

Charlie Melcher:

So once you’re identified, you answer these questions and you’re identified as one of these types. You put on this wristband that has the color of that flavor— fruity, or— and then as you go further into the tour, you get offered your first drink. And then you’re getting one that has been mixed specifically to appeal to your taste buds. And hopefully that means that that first liquid to lips is this happy moment for you where you’re like, wow, I like this.

Christian Lachel:

Yeah, it’s really magical and in any group you’re going to find that everybody’s in different places. My wife and I have done it a few times, and we are never the same flavor profile. And actually with that of the number of serves we have in the space, we’ve calculated that there’s over 800 different combinations. So you can come back time and time again, and if you wanted to just say, I’m just going to grab green this time, or I’m going to grab blue, I’m going to go to “fresh,” or I’m going to go to “smoky,” you’re gonna have a completely different experience and people do it. People do it all the time.

Charlie Melcher:

I was also so impressed with the ability to use AI in such a thoughtful way to give personalization, to give that kind of customization so that my first drink was one I really did enjoy, and so did 90% of the other people, which had me wanting to have a second drink and then go to the pairings and by the end, feeling quite happy. I also noticed that you used AI in that ability to create a customized bottle with artwork on a bottle that I could then wasn’t inexpensive, but I could have create my own version of art for a custom bottle that could only have made there on location.

Christian Lachel:

That’s one of those continuing innovation stories. These places like Johnnie Walker Princes Street are innovation spaces and are platforms for trying things. That particular project we didn’t personally, BRC didn’t work on that, but the genesis of it was kind of there in a sense that we had worked with Scott Naismith, who is this incredible landscape painter, contemporary landscape painter in Scotland. He did all the paintings in the Explorers’ Bothy upstairs. That project that they’ve developed I think is a great extension. Again, when you have a strong story and brand world or story narrative that holds the place together, like this innovation bottle with Blue label, which is a first of its kind. Because it’s actually working with the artist, not just scraping kind of the world of potential other art, but you’re actually acknowledging that this artist is going to ringfence their sort of artwork as a way for the AI to look at it and then find a way, a very through a series of, again, questions and prompts that you find your own unique painting, your own unique version of Scotland. The AI is there as a way of serving the audience and not the other way around. It really is there to deliver on the hopes and the dreams and desires that audiences want, which is how do I take something that I can’t get anywhere else, only here, only in this moment, something special. “I know my grandfather is a huge, or my father is a huge Johnnie Walker fan. Wow, let me make something personal for him.” And this is the one off and only bottle of this in the world. Here it is for you.

You’re building again, another memory. In fact, you’re extending that as a gift to somebody else who loves the brand.

Charlie Melcher:

I mean, I left not wanting give that to somebody else, but to keep it for myself. And that idea that I could collaborate with the artist by manipulating or adapting his art in a way that was pleasing to me, reflective of my taste, and then have that permanently printed on a bottle there in the store, it became not only a reflection of me in a way, but also a reflection of that experience that’s very unique to that place. And then there’s a number of storytelling moments on the tour. There’s places where you’re explaining the process of how it’s made. All of that is very interactive and well done, very professionally done. And then the stir experience where there was this pairing with food, honestly, that blew me away. I was not expecting to have one such high quality food and two, to have the food really so thoughtfully. I mean, it was better because I was having it with the drinks, with the tasting, and I had never really thought about this type of alcohol as a pairing alcohol with food. Tell us about the development of that.

Christian Lachel:

Yeah, I mean, that’s one of those experiences that when we thought about Johnnie Walker Princes Street from the beginning was we thought of it as an experiential platform. We knew that over time experiences would need to change and evolve, and that there was room for the team to develop things on their own. So we had an experience when we opened called kind of the Explorer’s Voyage and Explorer’s Journey, which was really tasting your way through the four corners of Scotland. And again, that’s linked to these four distilleries that we have, that are Johnnie Walker distilleries and the lowlands and the highlands and Speyside and on Islay, which is kind of the smoky whiskey island. We knew we wanted to have elevated food and the ability to do elevated experiences. What they were then able to do is evolve it since then to really take that explorer’s idea, which was thinking about how you could taste your way through Scotland, but then combining it in new ways with these lower ABV or alcohol cocktails or creations that are completely linked to a local food pairing.

So you’re having a wonderful bite, let’s say, of a wonderful oyster with all the right sort of notes that you’re getting, whether that’s a little bit of the creaminess, a little bit of the salt, a little bit of some acid, and then pair it with a cocktail that’s just perfect to go with that. And that sort of combination takes you on a story. It takes you into not only the places where these different variants are made, like Caol Ila or Glenkinchie whiskeys, but it also takes you into the food and the terroir of this amazing place that is Scotland. I mean, Scotland is so natural and beautiful, and how do you bring that to life when you’re sitting in this urban space and it’s a beautiful bar. I mean, it’s a beautiful room, but at the same time, you’re not in nature. So you have to bring nature there and find a way to do it in an elegant way, and it’s gone over extremely well.

Charlie Melcher:

And then for us at least, the final payoff was going up to the bar, walking out on the terrace, and all of a sudden having the best view of the castle that we had seen anywhere in town. It’s the perfect picture. It’s where we took photos, and all of a sudden it again made you feel of that place. You were there in that moment. Literally, everyone pulled their phone out to take a picture.

Christian Lachel:

Yeah, everyone loves that photo. I mean, that was kind of one of those moments when we were looking at site selection of trying to find the right place in the city to be able to celebrate the view in the iconic view of the castle, which is really, it is so unique. I mean, you think about all the cities in the world, and Edinburgh just has this wonderful sense of history, and you cannot escape it anywhere. The new town is older than the United States, know what I mean? The old town is older than— and it’s layers and layers and layers, and it’s a one in a million kind of view.

Charlie Melcher:

Christian, tell us about the metrics of success from the place. How do you measure it and how’s it measuring up?

Christian Lachel:

Well, with all of these projects, getting the kind of capital investment for these things, there has to be a strong business case. There has to be strong objectives for the brand, and we always measure it against a couple of things. One, we look at the community, so what are the objectives within the community? The fact that we have community members coming in and really enjoying it, people actually coming in and booking for lunches and dinners is really important because the community has taken ownership, and we did some things that were very special for the community. There’s a clock on the outside, on the corner. So many people in Scotland, especially in the capital city, met their first date underneath that clock, and they remember it, and we wanted to make sure that we didn’t take that away. One of the biggest things when we got involved in the project and they knew that we were going to turn this, said, oh, what are you doing with the clock? Well, we sent it off to the people who were restoring Big Ben, and they restored it beautifully. And on Valentine’s Day, it came back in the Highlanders. And so finding ways to make sure we’re respecting community, bringing those jobs, bringing people in, that was important. Part of it was to introduce people to Johnnie Walker, just something that they feel like they personally made a friend at Johnnie Walker. It’s no longer a bottle, it’s: “Wow, I got to know Rob, or I got know Sarah, and I just had a wonderful experience and I didn’t know I liked whiskey, but now I do. I like Scotch.” But I think that what we’re seeing though, especially for brands, is it’s got to be transformational. It has to have the ability for people to come into experience one way and come out transformed in some other way.

Charlie Melcher:

So do you think that more and more companies are looking to invest in immersive experiences to build these kinds of emotional connections with their customers?

Christian Lachel:

Yes. Yes. We’ve been in this space as BRC for over 43 years. We started—our roots were with Walt Disney out of Imagineering initially and with General Motors. Those were our first clients. But we’re seeing an uptick in this. And I think part of it is because this sort of need or want and desire from audiences to have unique experiences and engagement with brands where they can get—if they’re done in an authentic way. If they become a sales ad, nobody’s showing up. But if you do it in an authentic way, it can be really powerful. For example, we’re working on a project in Switzerland on one of the oldest chocolate brands. It is the oldest chocolate—

Charlie Melcher:

I’m prepared for a tasting there too. I just want you to know.

Christian Lachel:

Yeah, it’s wonderful. And it’s the oldest chocolate brand in Switzerland, and they’re also— it acknowledges the foundation of the beginning of milk chocolate, stabilized milk chocolate. So there’s amazing stories. People come. So all of these places have stories to tell. They’re about people. They’re about place. Yes, they’re about product, but they’re also really delivering on bringing a cultural context to these brands. And oftentimes they are the brands that have helped to shape a city, and I think we’re going to see more and more of it because the brands need new ways to engage audiences and create more meaningful relationships.

Charlie Melcher:

I think that one of the problems that a lot of companies make is that they think that their brand and their story is the hero. They should be thinking about this as, their customer’s the hero and their role is to support their customer on their journey. And if they’re lucky, their product or service becomes the magic gift that helps the customer or the hero succeed in their journey. You’re enabling that guest to have an experience that becomes theirs that they add to the history of Johnnie Walker by making their own memories and having their own experiences there, and that they can take those away and as you said, be transformed by them and finding that way for them to be your collaborator, not just your customer, but your partner in a story or in an experience.

Christian Lachel:

And I think that’s why we don’t really ever use the word customer or consumer. It sort of doesn’t feel right. I think when you think of it that way, that we’re just consuming something or they’re just a customer, they’re a guest. They’re an audience that— you know, it’s that world of hospitality. When you invite somebody into your home, what’s the first thing to do? You welcome them and you want to say, “well, what have you been up to? Can I get you something? Yeah, have a seat. What would you like to drink? Hey, tell me a little bit what’s been going on.” And you don’t make it about yourself and authentically, you’re trying to get to reconnect with somebody. And these brand homes and visitor experiences for these companies and brands are, you are welcoming people into your home. We are saying, I would love to have a relationship with you, but if you don’t treat me well like anything, then we’re never going to have that relationship. And that’s the thing. It’s not just the attendance, it’s not just the retail sales, it’s actually having a direct to your audience relationship where you can have these two-way conversations and actually have— and you know who they are. That’s the kind of relationship, if you’re a brand, that’s what you really want.

Charlie Melcher:

Yeah, it’s an ongoing relationship, not a transaction. Or a one and done.

Christian Lachel:

Yeah.

Charlie Melcher:

Are there any new tools in the arsenal for trying to create that kind of emotional connection with your audience?

Christian Lachel:

The tools are always changing, aren’t they? There’s always that new bit of tech that you’re chasing, and we’re always looking at new tech or we’re looking at a new way to project or tell stories. But what I think we find at BRC is when you take existing things that are really interesting and stable and then combine them in new ways, that creates something different. And it’s a bit of a magic trick. And I always think technologies in combination are sometimes more interesting than just the new thing. Because I think if you just are using the new thing, it’s like, “I’ve got my hammer, now everything’s a nail,” right? And that’s just– now I’m just servicing through that lens versus saying, okay, here’s the experience we’re trying to create. Here’s the emotions that we’re trying to generate. Here’s the sort of conversation we’re trying to have with the audience. Let’s take a little bit of this and a little bit of that and a little bit of that, and combine them in a new way to create something new that’s actually quite nobody’s seen, but it’s all stuff, parts and components that feel known.

Charlie Melcher:

Have you seen any other examples of corporate immersive experiences that you’ve been impressed with?

Christian Lachel:

Oh, yeah. There’s a great experience in Paris for the House of Dior, the Galerie Dior. The first time I saw a version of this was actually at the Louvre or an adjacent gallery of the Louvre as sort of more of a traveling exhibit, and then it went to the VNA, and now it’s a more permanent experience, but it’s done, I think in a much richer, more wonderful way where they could make it a little bit more artistic. It’s perfectly aligned with the brand. The spaces are artful, and they’re beautiful, and of course they change. They have a great sort of platform again for changing out the stories. That’s a piece of work that I absolutely, deeply respect, and I think they were perfect and they didn’t force you through the retail because they know that most people can’t afford it, so they’re also respecting the audience, right? So I really, really enjoyed that. That’s probably one of my favorite examples of the recent years. I mean, there’s others that you go, gosh, they did a great job with that and they nailed it. That’s one of the benefits of just being on part of the FoST Explorers group with you and the team. It’s always great to see and celebrate really great creative work from everybody in this industry.

And the moment that you see it as competition versus learning, I think you coming at it from the wrong perspective because great athletes help each other get better, and all of us help each other get better at every step of the way.

Charlie Melcher:

We certainly subscribe to that here and love to celebrate anybody who’s pushing it forward and doing high quality work. It elevates everybody else with that spirit. I appreciate the excellent work that you all do at BRC and appreciate your being open and willing to share with us about your experience, and I really hope to get to come see some of the other experiences that you all build. So Christian, thank you for being here today.

Christian Lachel:

Thank you, Charlie. It’s always a pleasure to be back and spending time with you and appreciate the time.

Charlie Melcher:

Once again, I’m Charlie Melcher, and this has been The Future of Storytelling Podcast. Thanks for joining me. If you enjoyed the podcast, we’d so appreciate it. If you’d leave a nice review and share it with a friend and to get more of the latest news from the worlds of immersive media, marketing, and storytelling, be sure to visit fost.org. There you can learn more about the FoST Explorers Club and subscribe to our free monthly newsletter, FoST in Thought. The FoST Podcast is produced by Melcher Media in collaboration with our talented production partners, Charts & Leisure. I hope to see you again soon for another deep dive into the world of storytelling. Until then, please be safe, stay strong, and story on.