If Johnnie Walker was seen by twenty-somethings as a stodgy scotch for their grandpa, and guided tastings were the answer for changing their perception, how could we scale this mentorship program in a way that spoke to a younger generation?

By speaking to them, literally, in the form of a Facebook Messenger chatbot and Amazon Alexa skill.

I partnered with a UX Director on the voice interface design and flow, basically defining and scripting what the bots would say at every turn through label selection and purchase, guided tastings, recipes and trivia, in a signature brand of “bot humor” to ensure the bots were anything but stodgy.

In the first 5 months post-launch, we had 7,000 daily unique users on Facebook and 4,000 on Alexa with a 5-star user rating, and almost all positive reviews minus that guy who said “Three Bean Salad?”

Get out your monocle and see for yourself:

Facebook

Alexa