A good marketing campaign can put a brand in the minds of many for decades. Consider the Budweiser Frogs or “The Most Interesting Man in the World” ads from Dos Equis. Then, there’s the Canadian Club whisky “Hide a Case” campaign, which is still getting press nearly 60 years after its initial launch.
Not only is that the case because it was a stroke of marketing genius, but it also presented a mystery that remains unsolved. And if there’s one thing we can take away from the ongoing popularity of true crime documentaries, it’s that people love an unsolved mystery.
Hiding the Loot
The year was 1967. Whisky brand Canadian Club was under the ownership of liquor company Hiram Walker & Sons, which decided to promote the brand with a whisky treasure hunt dubbed the “Hide a Case” campaign.
Canadian Club reps traveled to far-flung corners of the world and began hiding 12-bottle cases of whisky in secret locations. The spots included, but were not limited to, the Great Barrier Reef, the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, a waterfall in Venezuela, the North Pole, and the roof of a skyscraper in Manhattan. Between 1967 and 1991 — when the campaign ended — a total of 25 cases had been stashed.
Over those 24 years, the brand periodically published print ads that offered hints to individual cases’ whereabouts. One read “Devil’s Backbone Reef hides the world’s strangest shipwreck… and a case of Canadian Club.” “We left a great gift idea up near the North Pole. A case of Canadian Club,” read another.
During the ‘70s, the value of each case was about $125 (or $740 in 2024), but the price — or quality of the liquid — wasn’t the point. The hunt captured the wanderlust of the masses far and wide, inspiring trips to remote parts of the globe to find the hidden whiskies. In 1968, for example, a couple rerouted their planned honeymoon in Acapulco to Venezuela during monsoon season. According to The Washington Post, they found one of the coveted cases under Angel Falls, the world’s tallest uninterrupted waterfall. In 1978, two friends reportedly spent 13 weeks scouring the Big Apple to locate a case before discovering the treasure atop a Manhattan skyscraper. Many others were uncovered, but the trails eventually went cold.
The Campaign, Revived
As of 1980, nine of the cases remained at large. By this point, a lot of the hype around the campaign had subsided and even the die-hard treasure hunters of the previous decades had generally lost interest. Fast-forward to 2010, and Canadian Club revitalized the “Hide a Case” campaign by tacking on a $100,000 cash prize to a still-hidden case in the island country of Tonga.
The brand coordinated a funded expedition to locate the Tonga whiskies. Those interested in participating submitted videos of themselves pitching why they should be selected to go on the trip, and Canadian Club launched a poll on its website for the public to vote on who should win. In the end, four Americans and four Canadians were flown out to Tonga. Within just a few days, American participant Kristina Beall had located the case, earning her the $100,000 prize.
The Saga Continues
That leaves eight cases still out there in the wild. Based on clues from the old ads, it’s presumed that they’re hidden in the Yukon, Loch Ness, Robinson Crusoe Island, Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania, the North Pole, Lake Placid, and two unknown locations.
As of 2011, Canadian Club has been owned by Suntory Global Spirits, which doesn’t officially support the campaign and wasn’t able to offer any hints as to where the cases may be. To the conglomerate’s credit, encouraging Indiana Jones types to venture to the North Pole or the depths of Loch Ness to find old whisky is probably not the best idea. Plus, there’s always the chance that some of the whiskies were found and never reported. Regardless, the search is technically still ongoing.
*Image retrieved from Canadian Club.
