‘Advertising has changed’: how star power and big budget filmmaking is selling us more stuff
This 12-part, multimillion-dollar advertisement for whisky, directed by Joel Edgerton and starring Harrison Ford, is the latest must-see marketing moment.
There’s a blessed break in Sydney’s storm-prone late January weather as we board a boat bound for Lavender Bay, alight onto a private jetty and ascend the stairs to a Tobias Partners-designed harbourside pile emblazoned with a neon sign that says “Glenmorangie” (a Scottish mouthful, but more on that later). I’ve found myself at a gathering of creative types – real creatives, I mean; I spy not one influencer here. There’s filmmaker couple David Michôd and Mirrah Foulkes, glamorous in black, relaxing on the lawn, and Alycia Debnam-Carey in a backless white number deep in chat over cocktails with fellow actors Phoebe Tonkin wearing black and Olivia De Jonge in silver – it’s a pretty monochrome affair, save for cocktails in bright hues: Old Fashioneds, Rob Roys and raspberry sour highballs crafted from 12-year-old Glenmorangie Original or 18-year-old Glenmorangie Infinita neat on ice (you may be sensing a theme here).
Canapes circulate from Bondi’s Icebergs Dining Room and Bar, its fashionably flamboyant founder Maurice Terzini stalking the room in Rick Owens metallic platform shoes that could double as knuckle dusters, ensuring that everyone has enough wasabi-spiced, prosciutto-wrapped melon.
I lose the painter Josh Yeldham to a conversation about the minerality of Sydney rock oysters with the waitstaff, and set off to find another highball when all of a sudden the centre of gravity shifts and the beautiful people come together to huddle around a projector because the reason for this little party is upon us. I’m at the world premiere of a 12-part, multimillion-dollar advertisement for Glenmorangie whisky, you see, directed by Joel Edgerton and starring Hollywood icon Harrison Ford, titled Once Upon a Time in Scotland. Before we splutter too much that this whole shindig is much ado about an ad campaign for an alcoholic beverage, consider that the Super Bowl just happened in the US and advertisers paid an average of $US8 million to air 30-second long commercials.
Marketing on booze, always a big-budget affair, has ratcheted up several levels in recent years. In the days after Once Upon a Time inScotland launches, Stella Artois unveils a commercial starring David Beckham and Matt Damon. We’re squarely in A-list movie star/ filmmaker territory as Edgerton, fresh from Sundance, introduces his short-film-cum-whisky ad and Harrison Ford saunters onto the screen. “It’s so meta!” I overhear one guest observe as the story takes shape: Harrison Ford playing grumpy about playing a grumpy Harrison Ford.
The all-star Australian team behind this campaign are Toowoomba-born Justin O’Shea, the former miner, self-described bogan and creative director who has flown in from Paris, Australian photographer Lachlan Bailey, Edgerton (who hasn’t allowed the humid Sydney night to stand between him and his trusty beanie) and fashion designer and Vogue Australia editor-in-chief Christine Centenera, who styled the shoot with her inimitable elegance and flair. She breaks into a big smile as Edgerton, with whom she has two young children, confesses sheepishly that his fretting over the shoot hijacked their recent family holiday. “I’m sorry I ruined Ibiza!” Edgerton tells Centenera by way of the room, adding that the pressure was amplified because Ford was his childhood hero.
WATCH THE ‘ONCE UPON A TIME IN SCOTLAND’ SERIES HERE
It was Centenera who styled the landmark 2022 advertising campaign for the Belvedere vodka label, which like Glenmorangie is owned by French luxury retail behemoth LVMH. That commercial, starring Daniel Craig and directed by Taika Waititi, arguably ushered in this new auteur-driven era of alcohol advertising while also launching Craig’s post-Bond rebrand. If Belvedere’s ad resembled a music video (with Waititi’s wife Rita Ora voicing the soundtrack), there’s something more whimsical happening in Glenmorangie country, and it’s not only the dreamy Scottish highlands setting. It’s an influence I can’t quite put my finger on …
“I’ve always had this love of Lost in Translation,” Edgerton tells me. Ah yes, that’s it.
Sofia Coppola’s 2003 masterpiece, starring Bill Murray as an ageing movie star selling out by selling Suntory whisky to the Japanese, is the peat in this campaign – “a way of getting to know the person behind the ad. I didn’t want to make something unrealistically beautifying of a product, we all know that we get suckered by that,” Edgerton says.
The result is a gently funny, totally meta riff on ageing Hollywood movie stars selling out by selling booze. (Come to think of it, it’s not unlike a magazine article selling out by writing about movie stars who are selling whisky …).
It’s Edgerton’s first time directing an advertisement, following two feature films, The Gift and Boy Erased. He landed on the format of a one-minute short “hero” film and a 12-part series of short vignettes shot in an “off-script” style. The first six episodes were released at the launch, with a new episode to follow every week. “In the digital world we live in, advertising has changed from the usual stock standard formats we used to have and the way people digest content,” Edgerton says. “There was a certain freedom to go, ‘OK, well, these don’t have to be 30-second ads. We can make some little stories here and see what it’s like to do something less earnest’.”
Tongues are firmly in cheek from the first episode, titled “Nice Guy”, which begins with Ford on the phone saying that, after a meditation in which he manifests a castle and some quiet time in a cosy chair in front of a fire, he has decided that he’s “going to Scotland” to shoot an ad for whisky. “But I’m not doing all that action man shit that they want.” He says he’s going to show everyone the real Harrison Ford, who’s not grumpy, before barking: “Make some calls. Get me a castle” and hanging up. Sipping on some whisky he looks out the window and mutters, “I can be a nice guy.”
We follow Ford as he travels to the Highlands of Scotland, arrives at Glenmorangie’s historic distillery in Tain and encounters the distillers (played by actual distillers, not actors). There’s a brief conversation about how to pronounce Glenmorangie – turns out it’s a bit like Glen-m’orangey, to which Ford, acknowledging the funky fluoro, remarks: “Well it’s orange … that’s a good reminder.”
He’s delightfully willing to send himself up. Hijinks ensue around the 19th-century Ardross Castle where he’s being put up, in an Inspector Clouseau-like tussle with a suit of armour. Later he finds a kilt laid upon his bed. “That’ll never happen,” he growls. Dear reader, there are billboards around the world (and recent advertisements in this very magazine) revealing that it did happen. In Bailey’s photographs Ford stands with the dramatic scenes of Loch Glass behind him, a wry smile on the familiar face, dressed in his custom-made kilt (by skatewear brand Palace), his wide stance angled just enough to make you wonder how traditional they’ve been with this whole caper.
There’s something uniquely Australian about the humour. As though all the Aussie talent behind the scenes have inflected the campaign with some Antipodean irreverence. “I bloody hope it was noticeable!” O’Shea says. “We didn’t try to hide it.”
But there’s also a poignant sense of vulnerability at the core of the ad – just as there was with Murray in Lost in Translation. At 82, Ford is (and the creative team make no attempt to conceal this) visibly more frail and rickety in look and demeanour. Much is stripped back to show him as an older man who knows what he likes and what he wants. It’s bold and brave in its authenticity.
“We are living in a world where we’re embracing more weirdness, quirks, different types of humans, and pushing towards a greater acceptance of things we used to hide,” says Edgerton. “Obviously I didn’t want to make the ad too much of a serious exploration of those things – because we’re there to have fun – but there’s definitely a pinch of that.
He adds: “I don’t know a guy my age who didn’t grow up watching and most likely loving Harrison Ford. I was right in that pocket, as a kid in the ’80s, to be fully transported by him, particularly as Indiana Jones. And later, when I became serious about acting, there was such a humanity to Harrison’s performances – that he could be a hero, but also a very accessible one. Coming full circle to a point where I was going to work with him did make me a little bit anxious. Mostly because I wanted him to have a good time and to like what I was going to do with him [as a director]”.
So what was it like to meet and work with his hero? “To see him treat everyone with respect and share his sense of humour with everybody and be such a hard worker, and want us all to do well … It was a dream.”
O’Shea tells this magazine that he was inspired by 2008 Louis Vuitton advertisements starring Sean Connery, Keith Richards, Francis Ford Coppola and Mikhail Gorbachev, among others, shot by Annie Leibovitz.
“I’ve always wanted to create something with that level of cinematic beauty and timelessness. But to do this you need a legend to help carry the legacy of the imagery. So my pitch to Harrison when we first met was to create something iconic. Something which people would look back at in 20 years and think it hasn’t aged a day.
“Glenmorangie’s home is one of the most beautiful landscapes I have ever witnessed. When I visited the distillery and the surrounding area my creative intent was very clear. I just had to get Harrison Ford here and we could do no wrong.”