Why Johnnie Walker doesn't care if you buy Blue Label

In the world of alcohol marketing, Johnnie Walker is the grandaddy of them all. Even before the brand found itself in the portfolio of global spirits giant Diageo, they had perfected the art of alcohol marketing, creating an almost religious nature around their scotch. The aura around Johnnie Walker scotch has grown to the point where opening a box of their top-of-the-line label, Johnnie Walker Blue is a special experience that few get to enjoy.
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0:00 Introduction
2:18 Tasting Comparison
4:09 The Premiumization of the Liquor Industry
5:31 Pricing Psychology
7:35 Johnnie Walker Doesn't Care, Because...
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But the curious thing about Johnnie Walker Blue, is that at the end of the day, Johnnie Walker doesn’t actually care whether you buy Blue or not. The thing Johnnie Walker has that Kendall Jenner’s tequila doesn’t, is that line of offerings that I mentioned before. This means that, if you can’t afford a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue, don’t worry little buddy, we’ll take your $60 in return for a bottle of Johnnie Walker Gold instead.

The Johnnie Walker line of Whiskys is an excellent demonstration of pricing psychology. As humans, we have a really hard time coming up with the value of a specific item by looking at it alone. We need to compare it to similar goods. What better way to help determine the value of a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue than by comparing it to the other Johnnie Walker scotches? It seems to be the most natural comparison available.

The interval between each of the offerings in Johnnie Walker’s lineup creates a relative pricing scale in our mind, that consumers easily correlate to perceived quality. If you’re feeling rich and eyeing up a bottle of Blue, a bottle of Black just doesn’t seem to be on the same playing field. But if you had no whisky at all and someone handed you a beautiful, sleek bottle of Johnnie Walker Black, you’d say damn good stuff sir.

A cornerstone of pricing psychology is something called price fixation. Consumers are really good at remembering the price of something, because they’re paying for it with their hard-earned dollars. If you know that Johnnie Walker’s best whisky sells for $200 a bottle, then that price, $200, becomes fixed in your mind, and becomes the metric by which you measure the rest of the product line.

If you become fixated on the massive price of a bottle of Blue - $200 for a single bottle of whisky, it makes the rest of Johnnie Walker’s line look affordable by comparison. You might think, damn I’m SAVING money by buying this $80 bottle of Gold. But really you didn’t save money, you just gave Johnnie Walker $80 dollars of your money that is still well above the $40-$60 dollars you could spend on comparable scotches from other distillers.

What Johnnie Walker has accomplished in this situation is called price framing. The result of the price fixation of Johnnie Walker Blue costing $200 frames the rest of the Johnnie Walker line to look affordable by comparison. It gives that bottle of Blue a bump in stature, too. It’s truly the best of the best. We figure - Why, it has to be if it’s commanding that price.

So really, Johnnie Walker truly doesn’t care if you buy a bottle of Blue. Blue is working its magic whether you buy it or not. It makes the rest of the Johnnie Walker line look affordable by comparison, and could very well be the reason why you buy one of their less expensive whiskies. The massive price of Blue also commands a sort of respect, because it is inherently stating “I cost $200 because I am worth it.” So in that sense, it may also give you something to aspire to have for a special occasion. It plants a seed in your mind. Because, you may walk out of the liquor store with a bottle of Black, but you know, in the back of your mind, that one day it will be Blue.