Keep on walking

THE Q bar in the Westlands district of Nairobi is the sort of place that makes marketers salivate. A few pool tables, a few flat-screen televisions (not all tuned to English football), some prostitutes, but not enough to scare off girlfriends, the bottles tidily arranged behind the bar, a soft gangsta soundtrack, and a crowd full of wage-earning 20-something men. It is just the place to find the elusive African middle class. And, having found it, to persuade it to switch from beer to costlier Scotch.

Through the crowd comes an African dressed as “Johnnie Walker” in red tailcoat and bouffant cravat. He is a carrying an iPad, of course. Flanking him are hostesses with glasses of Johnnie Walker Red Label, some neat, others with ice or fizzy-drink mixers. A Johnnie Walker app plays videos effusing about the “character” of the drink. The language is cloying—“a flavour experience no other ordinary whisky can match”—but seems to work.

As Africans grow richer, they drink more Scotch. They bought $147m of it in the first six months of this year, an increase of 34% over last year, according to the Scotch Whisky Association. Johnnie Walker is doing even better: sales doubled in east Africa in 2010, to 790,000 litres. The firm predicts an even sharper rise this year, not only in east Africa but also in west and southern Africa, too.

Johnnie Walker has a long history south of the Sahara. Scottish engineers brought crates of it up the Congo and Zambezi rivers decades before Coca-Cola set foot on the continent. Its distinctive square bottle was less likely to break when packed tight, and easy to spot across a smoky bar. The whisky was dependably drinkable even in jungle climes. Yet by global standards, Africans still don't drink much whisky. Each Nigerian sips only a third of a shot each year, on average. A typical Frenchman downs 40, even though it goes badly with wine.

Hence the marketing push by Diageo, the London-based drinks giant that owns Johnnie Walker. A 20-storey hoarding on the side of a skyscraper in Nairobi touts Johnnie Walker Black. Billboards and magazine adverts across Africa feature an Ethiopian runner, Haile Gebrselassie, “running for gold”. And Diageo spends a lot of money on training bar staff, many of whom are unfamiliar with Scotch.

In Africa, the firm does not stress the tipple's Scottish origins. Instead it places it in a glossy fairyland of personal progress. The head of Diageo for Africa, Nick Blazquez, says that Johnnie Walker is a useful signifier of success. In other words, he hopes Africans will drink it to show off. He may be on to something. Scotch sales tend to be high in hierarchical societies. In Africa, with its patronage culture, whiskies with distinctive labels should do well.

Johnnie Walker's labels make it abundantly clear how much a customer has spent. Red Label is the cheapest. Black is pricier, followed by Green, Gold and Blue. Beyond Blue is King George V, which sells for more than $500 a bottle. Criminals in South Africa buy it to prove they are successful criminals. The ruling class in Angola is another promising market.

Pricing an aspirational drink is a delicate art. The lowest rung on the ladder “has to be [within] arm's reach. It has to be affordable,” says Hugh Pile, Johnnie Walker's sales rep for Africa. A bottle of Red in a Kenyan supermarket goes for $11. Small bottles tempt those who do not “have the pocket” for a full-sized one. A half-bottle of Black in Q's costs $19, down from $32 a year ago.

Even the cheapest imported whiskies are pricier than Kenya's excellent beers (such as Diageo's Tusker). And branded beer is pricier than lumpy home-brew (which is probably the African market leader by volume chugged, though no one is keeping records). Johnnie Walker's market research suggests that, with a little push, many Africans will trade up, just as people in other emerging markets have. Premium whisky tastes good, gets you drunk and may impress your peers. What's not to like?