BOWMORE UNVEILS ‘THE ART OF TIME®’
UNLOCKING AND CELEBRATING A LEGACY OF OVER 240 YEARS
London, 17th September, Bowmore unveils a new major global campaign celebrating the ‘The Art of Time®’, since 1779. For the first time, we will tell the Bowmore story in depth, unlocking the rich layers of our heritage and paying homage to the craftsmanship and legacy behind our single malt.
‘The Art of Time’ is a global marketing campaign, which will be released in October 2020. It will be deployed across traditional media, social and digital commerce platforms with new still and dynamic content, secondary imagery and a set of key visuals. It will also be executed in stores with dedicated displays for mass retail, and premium visibility and window displays for whisky specialists and department stores, and for events.
‘The Art of Time’ tells the story of Bowmore’s exceptional quality and how our whiskies benefit from the power of time, becoming even more beautiful and precious over the years.
Bowmore is a pioneering house and the oldest licensed distillery on Islay; we have been refining our craft for over 240 years, and we still handcraft our malts today. ‘The Art of Time’ is central to the way we make our whisky. We invest more time than necessary at every stage of our process. We have our own proprietary malt barns, hand-turning our barley. We allow for perfectly timed fermentation periods. And we take our time to hand-select our casks, nosing every single one before it is filled with our new make. This care and attention to detail is what creates the complex balance of not just mild smokiness, but also maritime minerality and fresh stone fruit notes which is so characteristic of our timeless house style. This is the reason why Bowmore ages like no other, making us one of the world’s most collectible Islay malts today.
‘The Art of Time’ has provided the canvas for a refreshing new approach to Bowmore, ensuring a single identity across the core and prestige range, featuring a striking new colour palette and visual feel, inspired by the Islay coastal landscape coming together with the whisky itself.
For the campaign’s distinctive new visuals, Bowmore has drawn inspiration from its stunning surroundings, specifically Islay’s black stone formations that also surround our distillery. These formations have a strong connection to Bowmore’s own story, and Islay is home to some of the oldest strata in the world. These rocks have been shaped over a long period of time, transformed by seasons and enriched by the wild elements, just like our whisky.
Black stones also bring us back to the origins of the Bowmore name. Some historians believe it to be derived from a small black reef just outside Lochindaal whilst others reference the Norse for sunken rock, bogha mor, as its origination. Whichever may be true, this black stone is meaningful to our home and our name. It is central to our new visual identity and the foundation of our new key visual, leveraging black rocks as a metaphor to visually bring to life the layers of time and its transformative power. From rough beauty, our new make, to the smoothest layer of all, our Bowmore whisky, Bowmore is a masterpiece sculpted by time.
Céline Daniel, Global Marketing Manager at Bowmore, comments, “We are delighted to unveil our new ‘The Art of Time’ campaign, bringing Bowmore to life in a bold new way but importantly, remaining grounded in our history and roots on Islay. This is the first time we will be exploring Bowmore’s history and craftsmanship with such depth and with such consistency at a global level.
“We believe that Bowmore is a work of art, and our understanding and respect for time is central to how and why we craft our whisky. With this campaign, we will show how Bowmore uses time to transform our celebrated single malt into a true masterpiece. By drawing inspiration from the black rocks surrounding our distillery, we are also paying homage to the way time has shaped not only our whisky, but also Islay itself.”
‘The Art of Time’ global campaign is launching shortly after Bowmore announced its first collaborative creation with Aston Martin in August 2020, the Black Bowmore DB5 1964, a striking concept which brings together an iconic whisky and a legendary car in a bottle of equal parts, featuring exceptional single malt and a genuine Aston Martin DB5 piston with only 25 bottles* for sale. This partnership with Aston Martin reinforces Bowmore’s commitment to taking the time to create something special, with the craft and patience required to make sports cars and single-malt Scotch whisky very much intertwined.
