Persuading Africans to switch from beer to Scotch

THE Q bar in the Westlands district of Nairobi is the sort of place that makes marketers salivate. A few pool tables, a few flat-screen televisions (not all tuned to English football), some prostitutes, but not enough to scare off girlfriends, the bottles tidily arranged behind the bar, a soft gangsta soundtrack, and a crowd full of wage-earning 20-something men. It is just the place to find the elusive African middle class. And, having found it, to persuade it to switch from beer to costlier Scotch.

Through the crowd comes an African dressed as “Johnnie Walker” in red tailcoat and bouffant cravat. He is a carrying an iPad, of course. Flanking him are hostesses with glasses of Johnnie Walker Red Label, some neat, others with ice or fizzy-drink mixers. A Johnnie Walker app plays videos effusing about the “character” of the drink. The language is cloying—“a flavour experience no other ordinary whisky can match”—but seems to work.