Pernod Ricard’s The Glenlivet used the legacy of the 1956 Women’s March – and the images of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Lilian Ngoyi and Sophie Williams-de Bruyn – to sell whisky to South African women during Women’s Month. The ANC condemned the campaign as “particularly insensitive” in a country where alcohol was deliberately used as an instrument of exploitation and control under apartheid. The brand’s apology calls it an “influencer post” gone wrong. The production values say otherwise: this was a planned, budgeted, approved campaign – and a textbook example of how Big Alcohol appropriates social causes to target women.
A Whisky Ad Built on a Liberation Struggle
The now-deleted 75-second black-and-white video, reported by The Citizen, featured actress Dineo Langa in a tailored pantsuit, swirling a glass of The Glenlivet as she moved through rooms lined with portraits of struggle icons Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Lilian Ngoyi and Sophie Williams-de Bruyn. On-screen text invoked “the great Mama Winnie Mandela” and the anti-pass law slogan “Wathint’ abafazi, wathint’ imbokodo” – “You strike a woman, you strike a rock.”
The campaign reportedly went further, drawing a parallel between The Glenlivet 18 and the fact that Sophie Williams-de Bruyn was 18 years old when she helped lead an estimated 20,000 women to the Union Buildings in Pretoria on 9 August 1956. The video ran during Women’s Month, the annual commemoration of that march.
“Not Marketing Props”
The ANC was the first organisation to respond, stating that it strongly objects “to the manner in which this sacred chapter of South Africa’s history has been appropriated for commercial purposes.”
“The women of 1956 were not cultural props or marketing symbols; they were fearless leaders whose sacrifices and struggles helped secure the freedom and democracy that South Africans enjoy today,” said ANC spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri. The party called the campaign “particularly insensitive” because it “disconnects the legacy of these women from the lived experiences of communities that suffered under systems where alcohol was deliberately used as an instrument of exploitation and control.”
Social media users made the same point more sharply. One noted the irony that the generation of women celebrated in the ad had in fact protested at beer halls against men “drinking their salaries away.” Others called the campaign tone deaf and accused it of commodifying Black womanhood.
A Multinational Hides Behind an Influencer
The Glenlivet South Africa deleted the video and apologised “unreservedly” for what it called “a recent influencer post,” promising to investigate “how this post was conceptualised and approved to make sure this does not happen again.” Langa apologised separately.
Political analyst Tessa Dooms dismantled that framing in a sentence: the ad involved “a budget, story boards, a script, production, editing and PR strategy.” None of that is one influencer’s misjudgement – it is an approval chain, and it is the same chain the company now claims it needs to investigate. Calling the campaign an “influencer post” shifts responsibility onto the one Black woman in front of the camera and away from the multinational behind it.
That multinational is Pernod Ricard, the world’s second-largest wine and spirits producer, which owns The Glenlivet. Pernod Ricard promotes its own Code for Commercial Communications as proof that self-regulation works. This campaign – conceived, produced and approved inside that self-regulatory system – shows what such codes are worth.
Alcohol as an Instrument of Control
The history the ANC invoked is specific. Under colonialism and apartheid, the “dop” system paid farm workers partly in alcohol instead of wages, entrenching dependence and poverty. Municipal beer halls channelled profits from alcohol sold to Black workers into the machinery of apartheid administration – which is why women of that generation organised protests against them. Alcohol was not incidental to the system these women fought; it was one of its tools.
An alcohol multinational borrowing their images to move product converts the memory of resistance to alcohol-fuelled oppression into brand equity.
Big Alcohol Targets Women
The campaign follows a global strategy Movendi International has documented: Big Alcohol systematically targets women as a growth market, wrapping its products in themes of empowerment, independence and “having it all.” A study of 2,600 alcohol brand posts on Facebook and Instagram found brands appropriating feminist messages and positioning alcohol use as central to female friendship, success and self-care – while staying silent about the harm alcohol causes women, including breast cancer.
The Glenlivet ad is this playbook executed in a South African register: instead of “girl power,” the 1956 Women’s March; instead of generic empowerment, the most revered women’s legacy the country has. The strategy is identical – attach the product to what women hold dear, and sell.
Nor is covert social media marketing new territory for Pernod Ricard. In France, the company’s products were promoted through hidden marketing on TikTok and Instagram in ways that prompted legal action under the country’s alcohol marketing law.
The Harm Behind the Aesthetic
The women the ad targeted live with the consequences of the products it promotes. In South Africa, evidence reviewed by SAAPA and the South African Medical Research Council shows a clear link between alcohol and gender-based violence: women whose partners are regularly intoxicated face nearly six times greater risk of experiencing it. This is the harm that evidence-based alcohol policies – ambitious alcohol taxation, availability limitations, marketing restrictions – exist to prevent and reduce.
An industry that markets whisky through the legacy of women who resisted alcohol-fuelled oppression, in a country where alcohol drives violence against women, has forfeited any claim to be part of the solution. The Glenlivet’s apology deletes a video; it does not delete the strategy that produced it.
Sources:
Selisho, K. “‘Not marketing props’: ANC slams Glenlivet, Dineo Langa ad ‘using Winnie Mandela’s legacy to sell whisky’.” The Citizen, 29 August 2026.
“‘Insensitive’: ANC slams The Glenlivet ad referencing the 1956 Women’s March.” The South African, 29 August 2026.
“Glenlivet apologises after Women’s March campaign sparks backlash.” Bizcommunity, August 2026.
Atkinson, A.M., Meadows, B.R., Emslie, C., Lyons, A., Sumnall, H.R. (2022). “‘Pretty in Pink’ and ‘Girl Power’: An analysis of the targeting and representation of women in alcohol brand marketing on Facebook and Instagram.”International Journal of Drug Policy, 101, 103547.