How Johnnie Walker Turned a Century-Old Mascot into a Rallying Cry That's Endured for 25 Years

As one of the oldest brand mascots in the world, Johnnie Walker’s “Striding Man”—a red-coated dandy with a top hat and cane—has appeared everywhere from magazine ads to digital billboards to, of course, the labels of the Scotch bottles themselves. But Diageo North America’s CMO Ed Pilkington will never forget the day that the Striding Man showed up somewhere unexpected—on a golf course in the Dominican Republic. It was the early 1990s. Pilkington was running sales and marketing for United Distillers (renamed Diageo in 2002.) “I remember going to some [event where] you had the Striding Man literally striding around a golf course all dressed up in the gear,” Pilkington recalled to ADWEEK. The idea might have been charming were it not for a problem. “He couldn’t talk,” Pilkington said. “We had a mute striding man. And I remember thinking, ‘This is really not great.’ People higher than me realized that.” They did. Which is how, within the next few years, the foppish mascot—that had first appeared in a magazine ad in 1908—inspired “Keep Walking,” an ad campaign now marking its 25th anniversary. With a few notable exceptions such as DeBeers’ “A Diamond is Forever” (1948) and Nike’s “Just Do It” (1988), brand slogans rarely have a shelf life this long. But the story of “Keep Walking” is more than a tale of clever phraseology. It’s a study of how a brand adapted an Edwardian visual identity into a metaphor that resonates with 21st-century drinkers. What’ll we do with this man? Whether it was owing to the muted man on the golf course or not, come 1999, the liquor giant finally decided to overhaul its marketing strategy. It charged agency BBH with doing it. “The Striding Man has always represented the pioneering, entrepreneurial zeal of the founders," BBH’s then business director Jason Cobbold told the U.K.’s Institute of Practitioners in Advertising in 2008, "We felt there was something within that icon that could help connect the brand to progress.” BBH’s first move was to flip the mascot over to change his orientation: Now he was striding from left to right—more suggestive of progress. Designers simplified him, too, stripping him of his lorgnette and frilly cravat and turning him into a silhouette. The new Striding Man also became an allegory: his legacy and confident step would inspire the slogan “Keep Walking,” which in turn allowed the brand to associate itself with advancement and achievement. No cartoon mascot could ever carry that heady message on its own, so BBH relied on high achievers in its subsequent TV spots. The inaugural ad that aired in 1999 featured Harvey Keitel talking about how he conquered stage fright. A 2001 spot starred European football star Roberto Baggio remembering how his missed penalty kick cost Italy the World Cup in 1994—and then how, given the same shot in 1998, put the ball into the net. Connecting a scotch brand with the trappings of success proved a logical strategy. According to BBH figures, between 1999 and 2008, the campaign generated some $2.2 billion of incremental sales. Does he stay or does he go? By 2014, Diageo management had concluded that “Keep Walking” needed a fresh set of eyes. “BBH had been amazing,” Pilkington said, but “it was just time to freshen things up a bit.” That casual characterization belied the real pressure behind it. Mike Byrne, founding partner and global chief creative officer of succeeding agency Anomaly, still remembers his first thought when his firm won the Johnnie Walker account: “Don’t fuck it up.” “This brand is so important to Diageo,” Bryne told ADWEEK. “You feel that responsibility.” One thing was clear: the idea of linking "Keep Walking" to personal achievement had become, to quote Anomaly's case study, too suggestive of "greed" and "power lunches" to resonate with drinkers who now were "more multifaceted and multicultural than ever before." Progress on a broader scale Anomaly decided to keep the metaphor of progress but reinterpreted “Keep Walking” as a society-wide call to action instead. The manifestation of this thinking timed its debut to a nail-biter of an event: the eve of election night 2016. Anomaly released a minute-long spot that featured actor Wilmer Valderrama reading an adaptation of the lyrics to Woodie Guthrie’s 1940 folk song “This Land is Your Land." A panoply of multicultural vignettes, the bilingual spot was an unabashed call for tolerance and inclusion amid the fierce national debate on immigration policy. The ad concluded with Johnnie Walker’s updated slogan: “Keep Walking, America.” As Byrne explained, the campaign shifted Johnnie Walker from being a brand embodying personal progress to “the identifier to the people who take that step forward and push the boundaries on the periphery of culture.” The tactic paid off. By fiscal year 2017, Johnnie Walker sales had grown by 6% globally and 8% in North America. Under its new, cultural rubric, “Keep Walking” found many new meanings, most notably 2021's "Keep Walking Anthem." The spot featured a multiracial cast of young men and women stomping to a DJ’s mashup of tunes including Run-DMC’s version of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way.” Slipping in at the final two seconds was the “Keep Walking” slogan and the Striding Man mascot. Striding into the future The issue facing brand and agency today is how much longer a walk “Keep Walking” can take. It’s a question both brand and agency are tossing around now, even if the answers aren't quite clear. “We need to get back to basics,” Pilkington suggested. “We need to [address] a new generation, and we need to re-establish ‘Keep Walking’ again.” “What does [‘Keep Walking’] mean now? It’s different than it was two years ago,” Byrne said. “We’ve definitely gone more positive and optimistic—people want that. Other than that, we’re in the dog days of whiteboarding and having conversations. It's all happening as we speak.”

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How Johnnie Walker Turned a Century-Old Mascot into a Rallying Cry That's Endured for 25 Years

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