Johnnie Walker Taps Baseball Poem Might Casey for Campaign

Johnnie Walker has launched an integrated campaign that ties the scotch whiskey to the famous baseball poem Mighty Casey.

Mighty Casey is the fictional baseball player in the 1888 poem Casey at the Bat by Ernest Lawrence Thayer. In the original poem, Casey, the Mudville Nine's favorite slugger, strikes out during the season's final game with the winning runs on base. The loss is devastating to the fans and to Casey's confidence.

Johnnie Walker's sequel, The Mighty Casey: His Next at Bat, picks up the story where the first version ended. The poem explains Mighty Casey's despair and how the fans turned against him. He battles depression and self-doubt as he falls from the top. After his fateful strikeout, he is sent back to a farm team and struggles to keep in the game. The story goes on to recount Might Casey's rise back to the Big Leagues and another chance at being a hero.

The Mighty Casey can be seen and heard online

The ad campaign uses a short online film, print and wild posting (randomly-placed paste ups of the ads) to ask the question, "What if Casey had kept walking?"

A free online community, The Striding Man Society, offers subscribers over the age of 21 special offers and background and information on Johnnie Walker. The online content, at Themightycasey.com, includes the updated poem, lore, legend, tasting notes, distillery information as well as a downloadable desktop tool. The campaign launched in September in time for the playoffs and runs through the World Series.

Print ads feature the full-length version of the revised poem. The wild postings ran in New York, Chicago and Boston. The first two posting use the Mudville Monitor newspaper headlines announcing Casey's first strike-out and then proclaiming his eventual return to the game. The third posting features the Striding Man—who traces the path of the ball Casey hits to reclaim his glory—printed on a black background and the Johnnie Walker tagline "Keep Walking."