ARCHIVEBallantine's Space Glass Took Whisky Into Microgravity
Ballantine's Space Glass is a 2015 digital campaign created by Havas Work Club for the Ballantine's Scotch whisky brand, launched in the United States in September 2015, in which the agency and brand developed a functional zero-gravity whisky glass in collaboration with the Open Space Agency to position Ballantine's as a future-facing force in alcoholic drinks culture.
The campaign centres on a single, arrestingly tangible proposition: what would it take to drink Scotch whisky in space? Rather than answering that question with science fiction imagery alone, Havas Work Club engineered an actual prototype. The Space Glass uses a spiral outer ring and a helical drinking channel that draws liquid toward the drinker's lips through capillary action, making it physically operable in a microgravity environment. This is not a prop. It is a working object, and that distinction drives the campaign's credibility in the Food and Drink category.
In the United States, where digital campaigns compete intensely for attention within the alcoholic drinks segment, Ballantine's elected to anchor its message not in lifestyle aspiration but in material innovation. The campaign's single media asset — a digital film — documents the glass's development and demonstrates its function, threading aerospace engineering logic through the familiar ritual of pouring and drinking whisky. The Clapboard Score for the Space Glass campaign is 78 out of 100, reflecting strong creative originality and cultural traction against a backdrop of limited independently verified performance data. The campaign also drew on Ballantine's longer brand platform, rooted in individuality and authentic self-expression, translating those values into a context — orbital spaceflight — that had never previously been claimed by a Scotch whisky brand.
ARCHIVEBallantine's occupied a specific and pressured position in the global Scotch whisky market during 2015. According to The Spirits Business, Ballantine's sold 6.20 million nine-litre cases in 2015, up from 6.13 million in 2014, a rise of approximately 1.14 percent — making it the only brand among the leading five Scotch labels to record volume growth that year. Johnnie Walker, the category leader, moved 17.60 million cases in 2015, down from 17.90 million the prior year, according to The Spirits Business, while Chivas Regal declined from 4.59 million to 4.40 million cases over the same period, as reported by The Drinks Business. In that context, Ballantine's needed creative work that reinforced its momentum without imitating the marketing posture of a dominant competitor.
Havas Work Club's strategic answer was to move the conversation entirely off the competitive battlefield of heritage, taste, and lifestyle — the common currency of Scotch whisky advertising in the United States — and onto a plane where Ballantine's had no rivals: genuine participation in the emerging private space community. As Ben Tolfree, Account Director at Work Club/Havas, stated in coverage by Shots, the campaign was conceived as "an opportunity to support a start-up community making a genuine contribution to the space program." That framing matters. The brand was not borrowing space imagery; it was funding and co-creating a real engineering output with the Open Space Agency. This grounded the science fiction inspiration in verifiable fact, giving media and consumers something substantive to engage with rather than a polished visual metaphor.
In the United States, where whisky culture was experiencing renewed enthusiasm for craft and provenance during this period, the Space Glass campaign offered Ballantine's a distinctive register: intellectual curiosity rather than nostalgic prestige. This separated the brand from both the heritage-heavy positioning of Johnnie Walker and the more classical Scotch identity of Chivas Regal, carving out a space — literally and strategically — that belonged to Ballantine's alone.
The creative execution of Ballantine's Space Glass rests on an unusual foundation for a Food and Drink campaign: industrial design rather than conventional advertising craft. The zero-gravity glass was developed in collaboration with Ballantine's Master Blender Sandy Hyslop, according to a Havas Work Club representative quoted by Shots, ensuring that the object's design was validated against the actual sensory requirements of drinking Scotch whisky, not merely the theatrical demands of a film shoot. Hyslop's involvement anchors the prototype in whisky expertise, lending the engineering exercise a layer of product authenticity that a purely visual effects-led approach could not have achieved.
The glass itself is constructed with a spiral outer ring that provides grip in a weightless environment and a helical internal channel that uses capillary action to direct liquid toward the mouth. These are not decorative choices; they are functional solutions to real microgravity physics. Documenting this through the campaign's digital film required a production approach that could communicate engineering logic accessibly, blending elements of science documentary with the visual grammar of VFX-enhanced branded content. The result sits at an intersection that was relatively uncommon in alcoholic drinks advertising in 2015: the campaign is simultaneously a product demonstration, a piece of popular science, and a brand film.
Ben Moss, Partner and Copywriter at Dirt and Glory and formerly of Havas Work Club, noted in coverage by Shots that the agency developed "this incredible sci-fi inspired idea that positioned whisky as one of earth's greatest inventions" — a framing that elevated the product category itself, not just the brand. The Drum named the campaign its Ad of the Day, and Adweek, in coverage by Katherine Ormerod published on September 9, 2015, offered a strongly curious response, describing the prototype's spiral ring and helical drinking channel in detail while adopting a lightly skeptical but ultimately admiring tone. Shots published an enthusiastic review on September 4, 2015, emphasising the engineering novelty and production credentials of the work.
No independently verified sales lift, market-share change, brand-tracking movement, conversion results, or return on investment data for the Space Glass campaign is publicly available. No awards are documented at Cannes Lions, the Effies, The One Show, D&AD, the Clios, the Webby Awards, or WARC for this campaign. What the public record does supply is a picture of strong editorial traction: The Drum's Ad of the Day designation, substantive coverage in Adweek and Shots, and a campaign footprint that, according to Clapboard's own archive data, exceeded three million viewers — though no methodology, measurement period, or geographic breakdown accompanies that figure.
Structurally, the campaign operates in a mode that is difficult to measure through conventional performance metrics but straightforward to evaluate on earned-media and cultural grounds. By producing a real, functional object — the zero-gravity whisky glass — rather than a simulated one, Ballantine's and Havas Work Club gave journalists, bloggers, and general audiences something genuinely reportable. The story wrote itself across technology, science, food and drink, and design verticals simultaneously, a reach pattern that a conventional television spot or digital banner campaign could not have replicated. In a year when Ballantine's was the only leading Scotch brand to grow its global volume, per The Spirits Business, the Space Glass campaign aligned with a brand in upward motion rather than one seeking recovery. Whether the campaign contributed to that commercial trajectory cannot be determined from available evidence. What is evident is that it raised the brand's visibility in the United States in a creative register — aerospace, VFX, science fiction, genuine engineering — that was entirely its own.
Ballantine's Space Glass is a September 2015 digital campaign created by Havas Work Club for Ballantine's Scotch whisky. The campaign features a functional zero-gravity whisky glass developed with the Open Space Agency, using a helical drinking channel and spiral outer ring designed to work in microgravity conditions, documented in a single digital film.
Havas Work Club created the Ballantine's Space Glass campaign in 2015. Ben Tolfree served as Account Director, and Ben Moss worked on the campaign as copywriter. The zero-gravity glass itself was developed in collaboration with the Open Space Agency and Ballantine's Master Blender Sandy Hyslop, as reported by Shots.
The Space Glass uses capillary action to move whisky in microgravity. A helical internal channel draws liquid toward the drinker's lips, while a spiral outer ring provides grip in a weightless environment. The design was validated with input from Master Blender Sandy Hyslop to preserve the sensory experience of drinking Scotch whisky.
No awards are documented for the Ballantine's Space Glass campaign at Cannes Lions, the Effies, The One Show, D&AD, the Clios, the Webby Awards, or WARC. The campaign did receive editorial recognition, including Ad of the Day status from The Drum and substantive coverage in Adweek and Shots following its September 2015 launch.
Ballantine's was the only leading Scotch brand to grow volume in 2015, selling 6.20 million cases against Johnnie Walker's declining 17.60 million, according to The Spirits Business. The Space Glass campaign launched during this period of upward momentum, differentiating Ballantine's from both Johnnie Walker and Chivas Regal through engineering-led storytelling.
Ballantine's Space Glass launched in the United States in September 2015 as a digital campaign. It comprised a single media asset — a digital film — documenting the design and function of the zero-gravity glass prototype. According to Clapboard's archive, the campaign reached an audience exceeding three million viewers across its digital distribution.
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