A recent study of the world’s top whiskey brands found posts posted on Instagram showing men outperforming women by 228% in 2020.
The distillation team at Cardrona Distillery in New Zealand
Educational platform Our Whiskey carried out the research as part of its report “Women and Whiskey: Representing Women in Social Media Marketing”. Our whiskey was founded in 2018 by Becky Paskin and Georgie Bell with the aim of highlighting the diversity of whiskey drinkers
The report analyzed the Instagram accounts of 150 of the world’s largest and most influential whiskey brands. It examined how many posts people contained and how often men, women or people of color were shown.
The study found a difference between the number of women and men featured in whiskey social media marketing.
According to the report, the world’s leading whiskey brands posted 3,896 images with men and 1,707 with women in 2020. In addition, 23 brands were released to mark International Women’s Day on March 8. Over the year, women made up 39% of the people featured on these brands’ feeds, and men made up 78%.
The study found that women made up only 36% of those represented last year, with the total number of women seeing a slight increase of 4.7% since 2016.
Paskin said, “In the past five years, female representation in whiskey marketing has seen a welcome increase. However, this study shows that we are still a long way from achieving gender equality.”
The Canadian whiskey category had the highest female representation (42%) in 2020, although only three Canadian brands were analyzed for this report. Scotch followed with a difference of 0.12%. The report looked at 37 Scottish brands, of which only 16 were above the industry average (36%).
Meanwhile, Irish, Indian, American and Japanese whiskeys were all below the industry average.
The study found that the New World Whiskey category has a high female representation (37%), partly led by brands and distilleries owned by women.
In addition, non-white races were represented with people in just 17.9% of Instagram posts, up 5.3% from 2016. Our whiskey said the highest representation in accounts from Asia and certain Scottish whiskeys with major South American ones and Indian was found following. Colored people were seen in 14.8% of posts from brands outside India, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, and Taiwan. 71% of the people in these markets were non-white.
Women who drink whiskey “normalize”
According to data from Kantar, cited by Our Whiskey, British women consumed 15% more whiskey in 2020 than in 2010 and now account for more than a third of whiskey drinkers.
Our whiskey urges whiskey makers to improve the representation of women in their marketing.
Paskin added, “Whiskey brands have the power to normalize the fact that women make and drink whiskey through what they display in their advertising and marketing. They don’t have to feminize their brands, but by simply being more inclusive they can change the narrative and appeal to a wider demographic of potential customers, which also has obvious business benefits. “
Paskin said brands should “consider how marketing is representative of today’s drinkers all year round”.