Conference: Raise Your Glass (June 2025)

Raise Your Glass

Raise Your Glass! Toasting the invaluable contribution of brand heritage and archives to the drinks industry

In June 2025, the Business Archives Council of Scotland held a summer conference, ‘Raise Your Glass! Toasting the invaluable contribution of brand heritage and archives to the drinks industry.’ It took place at The Scotch Whisky Experience on Thursday 12th June 2025 and brought together some of the world’s biggest drinks brands, as well as industry writers, storytellers, and museum consultants, we welcome anyone with an interest in understanding how heritage can be a strategic asset to your business or organisation to come along for the day. Brands represented included Guinness, Coca-Cola, Irish Distillers Pernod Ricard, William Grant & Sons, and The Absolut Company. The programme is available for full details of speakers.

With so many brilliant archive and heritage examples within the drinks industry, the conference was also an exciting opportunity for those working in areas such as marketing, product design, or communications, to see first-hand how heritage can be used as a marketing tool and an invaluable asset to your business and organisation.

Who should attend? This event was planned by BACS to be an opportunity for those working in business areas such as marketing, product development and design or communications to discover how archive collections can inform authentic storytelling, inspire new products and connect with customers. We welcome anyone with an interest in understanding how heritage can be a strategic asset to your business and organisation. The drinks industry has many excellent examples of where this has been successful and the value placed in professional management of archive collections and we believe these lessons can apply to other industries across our economy.

We’re delighted that the event was sold out with 65 people in attendence from a varity of sectors. The event will also included our AGM and an evening reception launch sponsored by TownsWeb Archiving of the new BACS journal Business and Industrial History: A Journal of Archival Research, which explores the whisky industry in Scotland, as 2023 marked 200th anniversary of the 1823 Excise Act.