World's largest spirits company Diageo, maker of Johnie Walker, is launching its limited edition whisky featuring a woman on the bottle, Jane Walker, replacing the top-hatted man in the US.
The product has been launched to promote gender equality and draw more women towards the world's best selling scotch, reported Bloomberg.
In an interview, Stephanie Jacoby, vice president of Johnnie Walker said,“Scotch as a category is seen as particularly intimidating by women, it’s a really exciting opportunity to invite women into the brand.”
The launch is the latest in the “Keep Walking America” campaign of advertisements which began in 2016.
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Jacoby also said that the brand is trying to increase the number of women employees in the company. In April, there will be 50% women in the board. Apart from that, the company has asked ad agencies to recruit at least one female director as part of any work pitch.
As many as 250,000 bottles in March will be in the market featuring Jane Walker. The company is donating one dollar to organizations that promote women, including Monumental Women and She Should Run. This limited edition will not be the last set of bottles.
This may be a good attempt to attract women towards scotch and whisky but according to Forbes, around 30 to 40 percent of consumers of scotch, blends and bourbons are women.
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In 2014, there was a shortage of bourbon and women were blamed partially for that in the US.
Attempts to customize food and other products to suit women is not a new thing. Recently, PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi, who is also the first independent female director of the International Cricket Council (ICC) had said that their company is considering coming up with a 'less-crunchy' version of their popular snack Doritos as 'women don't like to crunch too much in public'.
She had said that the company was looking to launch a 'bunch of them soon'.
