In an age where luxury brands must do more than rest on their laurels, the storied Islay whisky distiller Lagavulin is attempting a delicate balancing act: preserving two centuries of heritage while beckoning a new, culturally attuned audience to take notice. Its latest marketing effort, aptly titled “Beyond the Smoke”, seeks to transcend the confines of peat and nostalgia and instead introduce Scotch as a drink as versatile as it is venerable.
It’s a notable shift. Lagavulin, long known for its intense, smoky single malts, particularly the much-admired 16 Year Old, has rarely seemed interested in courting trend-driven sensibilities. Yet the new campaign, created in partnership with Uncommon Creative Studio, steps boldly into contemporary territory. A hero film sweeps viewers from a Brooklyn cocktail bar to a reimagined Islay distillery, rendered in painstaking miniature by MUTABOR Practical Effects, before landing on a Manhattan rooftop dinner. The scenes are seamless. So, too, is the whisky.
At the heart of this cinematic journey lies the campaign’s central premise: that Lagavulin’s character is richer and more layered than the smoke it’s so often reduced to. Yes, there’s peat, but there’s also honey, dried fruit, brine, and oak, a depth that can stand proudly on its own or hold its own within more experimental cocktails. And while the visuals do much to reinforce this narrative of versatility, it is Nick Offerman’s voice, wry, knowing, quietly poetic, that lends the project its emotional anchor.
“Lagavulin is more than just a smoky whisky; it evolves with every sip,” notes Jesse Damashek, Senior Vice President of Whiskey at Diageo. The line, while ostensibly brand-speak, is not without merit. The whisky’s enduring appeal has always stemmed from its complexity, a trait that more recent drinkers—less bound by the orthodoxy of neat pours and leather armchairs—are increasingly drawn to.
Indeed, this effort to broaden Scotch’s appeal is hardly accidental. Whisky, for all its rich history, is contending with shifting demographics and new drinking cultures. The rise of agave spirits, the resurgence of cocktails, and a global appetite for more inclusive luxury experiences have challenged whisky brands to evolve or risk irrelevance.
Lagavulin’s answer has been both strategic and measured. Beyond sleek visual storytelling, the brand is aligning itself with partners that bring cultural currency to the table: Racquet magazine, a stylish and cerebral tennis publication, and Highsnobiety, the fashion-world observer of streetwear and contemporary cool. It is through these collaborations, understated yet intentional, that Lagavulin positions itself not as a whisky for traditionalists, but as one for the curious.
There is a risk, of course, in courting relevance. Scotch’s mystique lies in its ritual, its provenance, its resistance to immediacy. But what Lagavulin appears to understand is that mystique can coexist with modernity. The campaign’s Spicy Margarita, replacing mezcal with Lagavulin 16, might offend a few purists. But for those open to reinterpretation, it represents a welcome invitation, less a departure from authenticity than an expansion of it.
If “Beyond the Smoke” succeeds, it will be because it resists the temptation to abandon the old in pursuit of the new. Rather, it nudges the drinker to look again, to linger a little longer, to discover that smoke is not an ending, but a beginning. And in doing so, Lagavulin quietly makes a case not just for its whisky, but for whisky itself, as timeless, adaptive, and, perhaps above all, intriguingly unfinished.
