How Johnnie Walker is highlighting women at the Oscars—which snubbed female directors

Diageo’s Johnnie Walker is using the Academy Awards and Women’s History Month to continue its outreach to women, this time by promoting female filmmakers. At a party for women nominated for Oscars, the Scotch whisky brand will roll out its own red carpet—a patchwork of images related to seven female filmmakers including Ana Lily Amirpour, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Janicza Bravo, Christine Choy, Julie Dash, Wanuri Kahiu and Claire Denis.

Prince-Bythewood, director of “The Woman King,” is among the female directors who were snubbed in the best director category, which this year only includes men—a fact that has led to criticism for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Johnnie Walker plans to promote its carpet with a video called “Fabric of Film” that shows how it was made, said Sophie Kelly, senior VP of Diageo’s North American whisky portfolio. The media buy for the video includes Condé Nast's Vanity Fair, all Hearst platforms, Spotlight Cinema Networks along with YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

Johnnie Walker, which is not an Oscars sponsor, will not run that ad or any others during Sunday’s broadcast on ABC. Instead, it focused on an experiential activation to prompt engagement, said Kelly. “It’s not about creating ads, it’s about doing something that begets content and inspires people to get involved,” she said. Johnnie Walker has focused on “adding new consumer experiences,” according to Diageo’s annual report for 2022, such as opening an eight-story visitor center in Edinburgh, Scotland in 2021.

The carpet was created by Anomaly, which won Johnnie Walker’s global creative account in 2019.

The Oscars effort falls in line with Johnnie Walker's previous outreach to women, which began when it created a version of its whisky called Jane Walker in 2018, switching the man in its logo to a woman. The move came under fire at the time with critics calling it unnecessary and offensive.

“We did get criticism for it, but if you pull back and look at the partners we worked with and the things we actually did underneath it, they are still partners,” said Kelly, citing actresses Sophia Bush and Halle Berry and the Equal Rights Amendment coalition as examples.

The Oscars activation is part of Johnnie Walker’s “First Strides” initiative, which was created last year. The brand's initiatives have included efforts targeted at women such as partnering with Angel City Football Club in 2021 and working with the funding platform IFundWomen to give money to female-owned businesses.

Johnnie Walker will be offering samplings at the party, held by the Women in Film organization that aims to help women in media with their careers. Women in Film is among those criticizing the lack of female director nominees. “Once again, Academy voters have shown that they don’t value women’s voices, shutting us out of the Best Director nominations,” the group said in a statement cited by Variety. Only three women have won Best Director at the Oscars, with two of them winning in 2021 and 2022. 

Johnnie Walker donated $350,000 to Women in Film to fund the organization's programs, said a brand representative. The brand’s other activations around the Oscars will include being the whisky sponsor for Vanity Fair’s Oscar Red Carpet Afterparty.

In other activations for Women's History Month, Johnnie Walker will also create a video series with entertainment news site The Wrap about female filmmakers, and is partnering with media company Hearst in a campaign that highlights the work of women artists.

Johnnie Walker is also working with film subscription site Mubi to offer a free 30-day subscription for a set of films created by women, said a brand representative.

The Oscars activation falls under the company’s attempt to reach new drinkers, whom Kelly described as multicultural and/or female. While the brand has tied the launch to Women’s History Month in March, “we see this as a year-long effort,” said Kelly.

Johnnie Walker’s sales grew by 23% in the U.S. last year, according to its parent company’s 2022 annual report.