Whisky has become more accessible to consumers over the last few years — not just the liquids themselves, but also how consumers learn about them. From books and magazines to the modern approach of knowledgeable brand ambassadors and online content creators, you don’t have to look far to learn about your favourite dram.
Where whisky festivals, distillery tours, and tastings were once the main ways to discover or try a new whisky, interacting with a brand now extends into the digital sphere via media such as podcasts and videos. With longtime bloggers and vloggers heralding the rise of whisky on social media, it is now possible for a whisky fan to sit and listen to a brand ambassador speaking to a podcast host at their leisure.
But there is another thread to this story, one with the capacity to transcend the traditional binary of distillery and drinker and provide a more holistic view of the marketplace: the whisky influencer. While some of these personalities leverage their audiences (which can number into the millions) in work with specific whisky brands, they can also take advantage of an objectivity that brand ambassadors, by their very nature, lack.
So, how do brand ambassadors and influencers differ — or are they both,
