Case № 06
A bold contest microsite to launch X by Glenmorangie, the brand's mixing-friendly expression. Influencer cocktail videos, a live voting engine, and a province-by-province summer rollout, all anchored on a vibrant new digital identity.
Whisky brand website design usually leans on heritage, dim photography, and oak. The Glenmorangie team came to me with a different problem. They were launching X by Glenmorangie, an expression designed for mixing into highballs and cocktails, and the brand needed a digital home that felt nothing like a traditional single malt site. The audience was new, younger, more cocktail-curious, and the channel was a contest microsite that ran across the Canadian summer.
I designed the contest experience, the brand and visual system for the microsite, the influencer video gallery, the live voting engine, and the province-by-province event rollout. The site is short and sharp on purpose. It introduces X by Glenmorangie, walks the visitor through a Mixology 101 highball teaser, and pushes them into a video voting flow that drives both engagement and a clear contest grand prize.
This case study walks through the strategy behind the microsite, how the design carried both vibrant and premium at the same time, and how the site, the events, and the customer relationship management connected during the launch.
Glenmorangie is one of the most recognized single malt scotch brands in the world, with an audience built over decades of heritage marketing. X by Glenmorangie was a different proposition. It was designed for mixing, aimed at a younger and broader cocktail-curious audience, and needed a launch surface that felt vibrant and modern without disrespecting the parent brand or alienating the existing whisky enthusiast. The new expression had to feel like an invitation, not a replacement.
The team also had a tight summer launch window. The site had to live as a contest microsite with influencer video content, a live voting engine, and a province-by-province event tour as the new whisky rolled into stores across Canada. New influencer videos had to be added to the gallery on a regular cadence, and event details for each province had to surface as the tour reached that region. None of that could be a manual rebuild every week. The build had to anticipate that the marketing team would be living inside the site for the entire summer, adding content and adjusting the contest flow on the fly.
Multi-language support was also part of the brief, because Canada is a bilingual market. The site, the contest mechanics, the voting flow, and the event content all had to work in English and French without forking the build into two separate properties. There was also a hard regulatory layer for any spirits site (an age gate, careful messaging, and provincial liquor authority constraints) that had to be respected without slowing the contest experience down.
I designed the microsite as a short, punchy contest experience that gets to the point. After a required age gate, the landing page introduces Glenmorangie and the new X expression with a tight piece of copy and a vibrant identity built around fresh fruit, citrus rinds, and the kind of summer cocktail ingredients X was designed to mix with. From there the visitor is pulled into a Mixology 101 teaser with cocktail recipes and ingredient lists, and then into the influencer video gallery and voting flow. Every section was sequenced to keep the visitor moving toward voting and discovering the upcoming launch events in their region.
The site is built on WordPress. That was the right call because the marketing team needed to add new influencer videos, swap in event details for each province as the tour landed there, and update the gallery on a near-weekly cadence without coming back to a designer or developer for every change. The voting engine is a custom build that records votes and entries in real time and pushes them into the marketing team's customer relationship management platform so they can track launch performance. The bilingual support is layered on top of the same content engine, not stitched on as an afterthought, so the team only manages a single editorial workflow.
The visual system was built to read as Glenmorangie without reading as a traditional single malt. Bold photography, cheeky messaging, and a vibrant palette anchored on cocktail ingredients made the new X expression feel distinct on its own while still living comfortably under the parent brand. The tone of voice was important here, since the writing had to feel summer and playful while still respecting the credibility of a single malt distillery.
I designed a digital brand layer for X by Glenmorangie that read as bold and modern, with a palette anchored on cocktail ingredients (fresh fruit, citrus, herbs) rather than on the heritage palette of the parent brand. The result felt distinct without disrespecting the master brand.
I designed the site to get to the point. Age gate, brand intro, Mixology 101 cocktail teaser, influencer video gallery, voting flow, and the province-by-province event rollout. Every section pushes the visitor toward voting and signing up for events.
I designed a video gallery built for ongoing additions. New influencer cocktail recipes drop into the gallery as they are produced, with each video getting an ingredient list, a recipe, and a vote button without needing a redesign each time.
Votes and event entries are recorded in real time in an onboard database that connects to the marketing team's customer relationship management platform. That gave the team a live read on launch engagement without waiting for end-of-week reporting.
As the launch tour reached each Canadian province, the site surfaced the local events, the local liquor store availability, and the local content. The whole experience runs in both English and French in a single build, not two forked sites.
X by Glenmorangie needed to land as a launch event, not as a permanent web property. I designed the microsite as a tight, opinionated contest experience that walks the visitor from age gate to brand intro to cocktail teaser to video voting in a few quick scrolls. Every piece of the page was there to drive engagement on the contest, with no extraneous content stealing focus from the core call to action.
The visual system had to feel like a Glenmorangie product without feeling like the heritage brand. I anchored the palette and the photography on the cocktail ingredients X was designed to mix with, fresh fruit, citrus rinds, and seasonal herbs. The result was a digital identity that felt summer, mixing-friendly, and a little cheeky in voice while still respecting the master brand it lived under.
Influencer-led cocktail recipes were the heart of the contest content. I designed the video gallery to take a steady stream of new videos over the course of the launch, with each entry showing a still frame, the influencer's recipe, the ingredient list, and a vote button inline. The marketing team could ship new videos into the gallery without redesigning anything around them.
I worked with the development team on a custom voting engine that recorded each vote and contest entry into an onboard database in real time. That database connected to the marketing team's customer relationship management platform so they could read launch performance live, segment entrants for follow-up, and track the contest grand prize selection without manual reporting.
Canada launches require English and French content, and X by Glenmorangie was rolling out province by province across the summer. I designed the site to surface local content (events, store availability, region-specific copy) as the tour reached each province, all running in both languages from a single build instead of two forked properties.
Not a services list. The real work streams, in the order I ran them.
I worked with the Glenmorangie team to define the audience for the X expression and to set the tone of the launch. The audience was younger and cocktail-curious, and the strategy was to land vibrant and bold without disrespecting the parent brand.
I designed the digital brand layer for the X expression, with a palette anchored on cocktail ingredients, bold typography, and a cheeky voice that sat comfortably under the master brand.
I designed the microsite as a tight contest experience. Age gate, brand intro, Mixology 101 teaser, influencer video gallery, voting flow, and a province-by-province event surface, all working in English and French from a single build.
I worked with the development team on a custom voting engine that recorded votes and entries to an onboard database in real time and pushed them into the marketing team's customer relationship management platform for live reporting.
I directed the WordPress build so the marketing team could add new influencer videos, swap in event details for each province, and keep the gallery fresh on a near-weekly cadence without coming back for help.
I made sure the launch site shipped with technical and on-page search optimization in place. Even a short-run microsite earns search traffic during a summer launch, and we wanted that traffic to be a credible source of contest entries.
X by Glenmorangie in the browser, made for mixing.
Influencer cocktail videos and live voting.
BurksUP / Glenmorangie / 2024
Heritage and craft, in pixels.
Site live at glenmorangie.com
The contest microsite launched on schedule and ran across the Canadian summer as the X by Glenmorangie expression rolled out province by province. New influencer videos were added to the gallery as they were produced, votes and entries were registered in real time, and event details surfaced in each region as the tour arrived. Visitors moved through the experience quickly, age-gated into the contest, watched a recipe video, voted, and discovered the events that were happening near them.
The microsite gave Glenmorangie a launch surface that felt distinctly tied to the new expression, vibrant and mixing-friendly, without diluting the heritage of the master brand. It also gave the marketing team a live, working integration between the site and their customer relationship management platform, so they could track engagement on the contest, segment entrants, and judge the grand prize without manual reporting overhead. The bilingual build meant a single property carried both English and French audiences without splitting the team's content workflow.
The combination of bold identity, focused contest mechanics, and a backend that the marketing team could keep updated themselves was what made the launch site fit-for-purpose rather than overbuilt. A microsite is supposed to be a season, not a monument, and X by Glenmorangie shipped exactly that kind of focused launch surface.
Drop your URL. Nick will audit your site personally and build a live preview you can click through before you pay a dollar.
Free, weekly
One real home-service site, broken down each week. What's leaking, what's working, the one fix that would matter most. Sent Mondays. Built for operators, not designers.
Built for home-service operators. Unsubscribe in one click.
We'll score your site and build a free preview. No payment, no obligation.
Got it. We'll score your site first, then send your preview link.
See your free rebuild
No pressure. No upfront payment.
