Glenmorangie’s CMO-Turned-CEO Raises a Glass to Creativity

For luxury conglomerate LVMH, Scotch brand Glenmorangie is a jewel in the crown of its wine and spirits portfolio.  

In 2022, the category brought in just over $7 billion in revenue for the French group. Since 2018, Glenmorangie doubled its profits and charted record sales under the leadership of former president and CEO Thomas Moradpour.

When Moradpour departed after five years in the role in July, the Scotch brand turned to its chief marketer Caspar MacRae to fill the top seat. Just a few months in, he’s making his mark with a strategy that builds on his predecessor’s success by bringing a marketing mindset to the top job.

“Marketers can bring a lot of transferable skills from the CMO role to the CEO one,” he told Adweek.

The path from CMO to CEO is a natural one, he added, not least because marketers are naturally oriented to think customer-first but also since they bring a combination of “left-brain, right-brain” skills to the job.

“Marketers understand how important creativity is, but they also understand the desire and need to drive bottom line growth,” he said.

The commercial value of creativity

MacRae is one of a small group of marketers who have made the leap from CMO to boss in recent months.

Mindfulness app Headspace’s Christine Hsu Evans, one of Adweek’s Marketing Vanguard Award honorees, was promoted to president in July, while in 2022 ex-Artsy CMO Everette Taylor was appointed CEO of crowdfunding marketplace Kickstarter.

Though the CMO position has a famously high churn rate, a recent report from executive search firm Spencer Stuart revealed a growing trend of CMOs moving on up.

The annual survey found that 77% of CMOs who left their jobs at one of the top 100 advertisers last year went on to higher-level positions—divisional manager, president or executive vice president, for instance—either within their own organization or at another company.

MacRae believes this evolution is rooted in marketers’ awareness about the “transformative value of creativity,” which can easily translate across other business functions.

In his previous role, MacRae committed to making Glenmorangie’s selection of single malts and blends more accessible to drinkers across all demographics. He introduced “It’s Kind of Delicious and Wonderful” in 2020, a brand proposition created in tandem with DDB Paris and Bill Lumsden, the veteran distiller behind Glenmoragnie’s single malts.

The platform ditched legacy whisky tropes in favor of colorful creative intended to showcase how whisky could elevate special experiences. MacRae said it’s helped the brand “perform very strongly” commercially.

As he climbs the C-suite ladder, MacRae is still focused on putting creativity and curiosity at the heart of everything the brand does.

“That mindset is essential for companies in our line of business to succeed, whether you’re talking about whisky makers, artists or creatives,” he explained. “You need to invest in creativity to build brand value.”

Innovation and curiosity

“It’s Kind of Delicious and Wonderful” has become a brand manifesto, according to MacRae, informing the brand’s marketing and product decisions globally.

“It’s not just given our comms a new perspective, it’s informing our innovation too,” he said.

While the distiller searches for another marketer to fill his previous role, MacRae is leading the charge on a campaign to promote A Tale of Tokyo, the newest blend from Lumsden, who has travelled extensively through Japan and long held a fascination with the country. The new blend was matured in rare Japanese mizunara oak casks in homage to Tokyo.

To commemorate the release, Glenmorangie called upon Japanese artist Akira Yamaguchi to design artwork that will adorn each bottle’s packaging.

The design showcases the artist’s perspective of the city, including landmarks and characteristics from both Tokyo and the Highland distillery, as well as traditional Japanese pastimes with nods to the whisky’s flavors.

Often described as the “Willy Wonka of Whisky,” Lumsden’s unconventional approach is actually what attracted MacRae to go work at Glenmorangie in the first place, he revealed.

“[Bill] is pretty much the epitome of nonlinear thinking,” the CEO said. “He’s always surprising us with his ideas, which are always a great creative leap-off point from a brand and marketing perspective.

“He’s been instrumental in his whole outlook, which embodies our brand values and purpose,” he added.

“There’s a wonderful synergy between the way he makes whisky. He does it in a way that is full of curiosity and imagination. We love embodying that in the brand itself. It’s fair to say that he’s, is in some ways, a creative director for the brand.”