Maker’s Mark launches new marketing campaign

Maker’s Mark has unveiled a new global marketing campaign titled ‘Make Your Mark’ to coincide with the Bourbon brand’s 70th anniversary.

The new campaign serves, according to a press release, “to inspire others to ask, ‘what if?’ and challenge convention to make their mark in the world”.

KK Hall, global brand vice president of Maker’s Mark, explained further: “To us at Maker’s Mark, this is more than just a campaign; it’s our entire brand ethos and experience. When our founders Bill Sr. and Margie Samuels created Maker’s Mark in 1953, they didn’t just want to make another bourbon – they wanted to make a better Bourbon. And they were brave enough to push conventional boundaries to craft something they were proud to share. That spirit lives on in everything we do, and we’re excited for the ‘Make Your Mark’ campaign to be a beacon of this mindset for whisky fans around the world.”

The debut film content of the campaign is called They Say. Directed by advert and music video director Henry Scholfield under the guidance of executive creative director Sam Shepard, the 30-second cut of the film features striking visuals intended to show how choosing the more difficult path can be more rewarding.

“In 1953, they said our whisk(e)y recipe tasted perfectly fine, so we burned it and made it better,” the narrator explains. This is a reference to how the brand’s founders decided to ignore their 170-year-old family whisk(e)y recipe in pursuit of a new one.

The film debuted in the US yesterday [27 July], and will be rolled out in Canada in August. It will then reach the rest of the globe in 2024.

Another way that Maker’s Mark has broken convention is by opting for the spelling ‘whisky’, usually associated with Scotch, rather than ‘whiskey’, which is much more widely used in the US. To understand why this anomaly exists, click here.