Monkey Shoulder, a global whisky brand owned by William Grant & Sons, is on a mission to challenge the traditional perception of whisky drinking. Their range of innovative whiskies are made for mixing, allowing bartenders and consumers to create elevated whisky cocktails and mixed drinks.

Despite being a relatively young brand (in the world of whiskies) who have been focussed on building use among the bartender community, Monkey Shoulder are experiencing rapid growth with consumers and their products are already sold around the world.

Following an identity refresh, Monkey Shoulder asked us to reimagine and build a new global website that reflects the energy of the brand and quality of the product.

Customers can easily buy Monkey Shoulder whisky from supermarkets without ever directly interacting with the brand. Our challenge was to design a brand website that would be truly valuable for Monkey Shoulder’s target consumer and build their relationship with the brand.

Through usability tests we found the biggest moments of frustration consumers experienced when buying from the existing website. Then we ran cross-market interviews with whisky-drinkers to inform idea generation for completely new features and functionality.

The website needed to do more than just showcase the product - it needed to be a home for the brand to have conversations with their consumers about topics they care about, like music, art and hosting parties. A North Star vision was set and a roadmap planned to release features iteratively.

With a whisky that pushes boundaries, we designed a website that did the same. Through strong fonts, lifestyle photography and animation, the site embodies Monkey Shoulder’s bold and creative personality

With rapid expansion across multiple markets, the master site needed to act as a template for future market sites. By understanding the needs of other markets in the early stages of the project, we were able to incorporate them into a shared North Star vision, and reduce the risk of surprise future requests.

In design and build, components were made with flexibility in mind to facilitate a smooth roll out of other market websites in the future.

In build, we implemented the website in a way that maintained a consistent top level website structure but allowed markets to control which components were visible on their website, in line with their regional marketing goals.

With the first site launched on time, we’re on track to release more market websites by the end of 2024.