Like those for fancy perfumes, ads for whisky rarely bother describing the product. It’s more about impact and prestige than smell or taste.
And it’s pretty impactful to get a big Hollywood star like Willem Dafoe to promote your dram. Except unlike Harrison Ford’s Glenmorangie ad from last year (which featured the descriptors ‘smooth’, ‘amazing’ and ‘nice’), Defoe is going all-out on the similies.
The ad begins with him describing locking himself in a cupboard to get a taste of the experience of the astronauts he idolised as a child. We seem him recreate the stunt – and lock eyes with an alpaca. So far, so insane. But then he gets to it, reading suggestions that Laphroaig tastes, variously, like “kissing a mermaid in a rocky rowboat on a feisty sea”, “like sucking on a burnt match” or even “dirt in a bottle”.
Dafoe’s delivery is pitch-perfect, undercutting any accusations of pretension with the raise of an eyebrow or a chuckle at some of the more outlandish descriptions. And yet they all sort of make sense: it’s rather poetic. The alpaca and dancing barley monster merely add a bit of visual flair.
As the ad’s slogan puts it: “Unforgettable.”
No comments yet