Scotland's second national drink - Irn-Bru

The world has Coca-Cola, but Scotland has Irn-Bru. I have seen it before, ‘down south’, squeezed in between the other soft drinks, looking unassuming. But here, Irn-Bru is King. My office colleagues seem to send down gallons of the stuff a day (to be fair, I would as well if I had to stare at the same spreadsheet week after week). Daily I spot people cradling bottles and cans of the fluorescent orange drink on the streets. Apparently, when the first McDonalds opened in Scotland, it was boycotted until they included Irn-Bru on their menu. But it’s not just anecdotal evidence which abounds. My economic reports tell me that, so far Irn-Bru has managed to resist takeovers, and it has the better part of Scotland’s fizzy drink ‘share of throat’. Talk about David vs Goliath!

The achievement is all the more surprising when you consider the taste of the drink. It is VILE (and here legions of Scots stampede across my desk and squash me to death in sacred rage). Ok, well, maybe not vile, but definitely… different. Have you ever had any of those orange-flavoured vitamin tablets, without actually diluting them in water, just putting them on your tongue for it to fizz away? Or, for the Poles out there, do you remember Vibovit, the vitamin supplement powder you could shake out of the package straight into your mouth? Well, it tastes nothing like it, but this is the closest I can get. I guess you just have to try it – preferably when there are no Scots around to feel offended by your reaction.

I guess it’s a bit like Marmite – you love it or you hate it – but with more nationalism. An English friend told me about the reaction of his Scottish girlfriend when she found a lonely Irn-Bru can in a shop in Spain - she was over the moon and practically in tears. He had never tried the stuff before, so, grudgingly, she offered him a sip. When he performed the usual ‘oh my God this is terrible get it off my tongue now!’ pantomime, she was so offended she snatched it out of his hand and refused to ever sleep with him again. Well, I may be exaggerating a little bit, but the fact is the guy is now hooked on Irn-Bru, and their relationship is progressing smoothly.

What satisfies my inner ad maniac is also the funny, in-your-face and sometimes offensive advertising Irn-Bru is known for. In the past, it proclaimed the health benefits of its iron content, and was actually called Iron Brew. It was pointed out that the name is misleading as the drink is not actually brewed at all, and certainly not from iron, which is why the truncated Irn-Bru emerged. Today, it depends on the image of the no-nonsense, masculine, brick and steel grim North for its appeal, and it is working. The advertising slogan ‘Made in Scotland from Girders’ is timeless, and their ad campaign of double entendres featuring animals is just my level – a prawn proclaiming it’s into Irn-Bru and hard core prawn sites, or a chick saying there is nothing like Irn-Bru when you’ve just been laid, well, c’mon, it’s not exactly high brow, but it does create a really appealing contrast with the family-oriented, white-toothed, girl-next-door sexy Coke ads. It won them multiple advertising awards, and, well, it makes me chuckle.