About thirty years ago I didn’t go to Manderley, I went to Islay.
It was an August Bank Holiday weekend. I met my cousin and his crew on the quay at Oban and we sailed down the coast and up the Clyde stopping off at Islay. Disappointingly Cap’n Cousin, like Jack Aubrey, was for ever wanting to crack on so I didn’t visit a distillery.
Now, if I return, I can visit my croft. Not a croft as such; more accurately a foothold but I don’t even have to pay the ground rent.
It’s the best bit of marketing since Rainy Days. That was a promotion for crisps that was also innocent fun although it must have cost Pepsi a packet. There is a message here. To get awareness of a product do not have a “Win A … “ promotion. Much better to have an “every entrant wins a … ” promotion although this can go badly wrong as Hoover found out. The British public are savvy and when offered two return tickets to the United States and a Hoover for £100 saw a great marketing blunder ready for exploitation. And then there was Persil. My flat in Southampton Row was rather small and got more cramped when it was full of Persil to give me and my friends cheap train tickets in the early 1980s. Those were the days.
Christopher, here’s something to mull over as you enjoy a fine Islay single malt, amidst your Hebridean Estate:
The most westerly part of mainland Britain lies a dram further west than the point of Clogherhead.