I fear that I am in danger of becoming like one of those Grumpy Old Men, who bore for Britain on our television screens on a Friday night, but what the hell are the nation's whisky marketers up to?
In the space of only a few weeks, three of the biggest names in the Scottish whisky industry - Macallan, Famous Grouse and Bells - have announced plans to target young drinkers and give whisky a ‘trendy new image'.
The first thing to say is that it simply won't work. Generations of marketing people have tried to convince trendy young things that drinking whisky is fashionable and all have failed. You see similar bouts of madness exhibited by Britain's sherry and gin marketers, who announce every year that they have found the magic formula to make their brands cool and thereby attractive to the young and impressionable.
The brutal reality is that whisky, compared with vodka - the young person's spirit of choice - is an acquired taste. All attempts to make the taste less challenging and more palatable - Famous Grouse is seriously suggesting that younger drinkers "mix the drink with elderflower cordial and apple schnapps" - merely damage the integrity of the product itself.
In part this reflects the marketing community's fixation with youth, which is particularly perverse when you consider that whisky is one of the products that has most to benefit from shifting demographics. The so called ‘baby boomer' generation has hit their 40s - the age when drinking whisky and listening to Van Morrison records suddenly seems like a good idea.
It would make far more sense to engage with this generation, who are already likely to be occasional whisky drinkers, than waste precious marketing money trying to convince a cynical and shrinking youth audience to put aside deep-seated prejudices.
However, attempting to engage a younger audience is not the worst crime committed by the whisky brands. No that is their attempt to make their brands superficially trendy at a time when people are increasingly looking for authentic, meaningful product experiences.
There have been a number of books and papers written about this subject in the past couple of years, focusing on how the search for authenticity has become a major driver for increasingly inner-directed consumers. These people are turning their backs on bland, mass produced products that have become over-reliant on marketing spin. In the words of WPP's Jeremy Bullmore: "Artificiality is suspect; authenticity welcome: as long, of course, that the authenticity is authentic."
The demand for authenticity has had its biggest impact on the food and drink industry, as demonstrated by the growing popularity of organic foods, farmers' markets and micro beers. Innocent Smoothies, Ben & Jerry's and Pret a Manger, with its focus on hand-crafted, high quality organic products, are all at the vanguard of the authenticity movement.
Few products are as authentic as whisky, with its potent combination of history, provenance and craftsmanship handed down through the generations. Its values of honesty, simplicity and naturalness are the hallmark of authenticity.
This does not mean that whisky brands have to rely on the same old clichés of kilts and heather. Being authentic does not man being stuck in the past and marketing your products purely on the basis of tradition. It would stick in a few Scottish throats, but they might learn something from their Celtic cousins - not the Irish, but the Welsh.
One of the biggest success stories in the whisky industry in the past few months has been the Welsh Whisky Company, which had single-handedly revived a whisky industry that had lain dormant for more than 100 years.
The combination of a quality, single malt, distilled using traditional techniques and a company with an interesting story to tell - did you know that the Welsh effectively founded the American Kentucky bourbon industry? - has proven highly successful.
Launched on St. David's Day this year, the company's Penderyn single malt has become a best seller, backed up by a suitably understated approach to marketing that has relied heavily on word of mouth - the most authentic form of communication.
Penderyn has been a success because despite being new, it is also authentic. It hasn't tried to be cool: it has simply been true to itself and its values. So my advice to the Scottish whisky industry is to forget trying to be cool in a vain attempt to appeal to youth. Perversely, your lack of cool may prove to be your salvation.
