P6 - “mass-produced products were virtually indistinguishable from one another. Competitive branding became a necessity of the machine age – within context of manufactured sameness, image-based difference had to be manufactured along with the product.”

P6 - “familiar personalities such as dr brown, uncle ben, aunt jemima and old grand-dad came to replace the shopkeeper, who was traditionally responsible for measuring bulk foods for customers and acting as an advocate for products…a nationwide vocabulary of brand names replaced the small shopkeeper as the interface between consumer and product”

P10 'Not only was Marlboro dead, all brand names were dead. The reasoning was that if a ‘prestige’ brand like Marlboro, whose image had been carefully groomed, preened and enhanced with more that a billion advertising dollars was desperate enough to compete with no-names, then clearly the whole concept of branding had lost its currency.’

‘The ad would say something complimentary about itself or the person drinking it, and importantly, add a dollop of humor so the “we’re the best” claim wouldn’t be so boring or pretentious. Absolut would be a product that didn’t take itself to seriously. Its brand was nothing but a blank bottle-shaped space that could be filled with whatever content a particular audience most wanted from its brands: intellectual in Harper’s, futuristic in Wired, alternative in Spin, loud and proud in Out. The brand re-invented itself as a culture sponge, soaking up and morphing to its surroundings’

Info found at: https://www.johnniewalker.com/en-gb/the-world-of-johnnie-walker/the-story/

The story of Johnnie Walker begins - naturally enough - with the man who gave our whisky his name.

The year was 1819 and John Walker’s father had just died. A tough start for a humble farm lad, you might think, but there was always something special about John. A glint in his eye, a fire in his belly, a spring in his step perhaps.

The world in those days wasn’t the friendliest of places and John knew it. No time to grieve. There was a living to be made. 

Within the year, the family farm had been sold and the money used to set him with his own grocer’s shop in the thriving local town of Kilmarnock. It was a smart move. John had a natural gift for business.

He also had a genius for whisky. In those days, most grocers stocked a line of single malts, but they were never all that consistent. This wasn’t good enough for John, who started blending them together so his whisky tasted just as good every time. It proved an extremely popular addition to the inventory.

When John finally passed away after a full and prosperous life in 1857, he left his son, Alexander, with a very healthy business.

These were fast moving times. Britain was the pulsating heart of an Industrial Revolution that was set to change absolutely everything. In Kilmarnock, the railway had arrived, carrying goods to the great ships that were plying regular routes to the four corners of the world.

Alexander knew a golden opportunity when he saw one.

In 1867, he launched Johnnie Walker’s first commercial blend and called it ‘Old Highland Whisky’. He then made the astute move of engaging ships’ captains as his agents to carry his whisky wherever ships could sail. Before long, his unique blend was available around the globe.

Soon afterwards, Alexander began using the famous square bottle to reduce breakages and made sure much more of his whisky arrived intact at its destination. He also added the distinctive label, slanted at precisely 24 degrees, to make it stand out even further from the crowd.

In 1889, it was Alexander’s turn to pass on the Walker name, leaving the company to his sons, Alexander II and George - the former a master blender and the latter a master businessman.

In 1909, Alexander and George renamed their successful new range of whiskies after the colours of their distinctive labels. Johnnie Walker Red Label and Johnnie Walker Black Label were born.

It was around this time that the leading young illustrator of the day, Tom Browne, sketched an idea for a logo on the back of a menu during lunch. Alexander and George adopted the ‘Striding Man’ immediately. At a stroke, John Walker the Victorian grocer became Johnnie Walker, the Edwardian dandy.

By 1920, Johnnie Walker whisky was in 120 countries. As the century progressed, it became part of global culture: immortalised by songwriters and filmmakers, idolised by socialites and movie stars, enjoyed by statesmen and walking shoulder-to-shoulder with the great sportsmen and women of the age.

On 1 January 1934, John Walker & Sons was granted a Royal Warrant by King George V to supply whisky to the royal household. We still hold a Royal Warrant today.

By the end of the 20th Century, the pioneering Johnnie Walker Red Label and iconic Johnnie Walker Black Label had been joined by the pinnacle of the blender’s art, Johnnie Walker Blue Label. Our award-winning range continues to grow, with the addition of Johnnie Walker Gold Label Reserve and Johnnie Walker Platinum Label. 

Today, Johnnie Walker is the biggest whisky brand in the world and its slogan is has been adopted and embraced everywhere, as a rallying cry for progress, as encouragement in adversity, as a joyful expression of optimism and as the best piece of advice you’re ever likely to hear. 

Campaigns:

Joy Will Take you there

Info found at: http://evanwilliams.com/heritage.php


"There's money in those hills, boy." As a young boy, Evan Williams had an adventurous spirit within him. An immigrant from Wales, Evan embarked on a long but worthwhile journey to America. Upon arriving, he ventured through a frontier where fortunes were possible, eventually settling in the land among the Kentucky Hills.He became a farmer, building contractor, harbormaster, businessman, inventor and civic leader. Evan made a lasting impression on the community through his leadership.

Sure, Evan Williams was known as a jack-of-all-trades, but he seemed to truly master one. Yes, we’re talking about the man who had a knack for turning corn into smooth whiskey. And Kentucky grew a lot of corn. So Evan made the best use of this abundant crop that he could think of, distill it. Realizing the potential of his whiskey, he set up his distillery on the banks of the Ohio River. Today, a marker stands at that very spot officially declaring Evan Williams as Kentucky’s First Commercial Distiller.


Evan's personality was perfect for politics. He was outspoken, controversial, and a natural leader. With Williams around, the business of government didn’t have to be boring and dry. Certainly not dry. Despite rules forbidding the use of whiskey at meetings, Evan Williams always brought a jug of his finest along. Rumor has it that the jug was regularly confiscated. Funny enough, at the end of every meeting he still managed to leave with an empty jug of whiskey (turns out, he wasn’t the only one drinking it). You could say Evan put the party in politics.

To create a backstory and heritage to my brand, It is important for me to have a deep understanding of what Cuba is like since the revolution. To do this, I have watched a series of documentaries which look into modern Cuba.


The Cuban Revolution (1953–1959) was an armed revolt conducted by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement and its allies against the U.S.-backed authoritarian government of Cuban President Fulgencio Batista. The revolution began in July 1953, and continued sporadically until the rebels finally ousted Batista on 1 January 1959, replacing his government with a revolutionary socialist state. The 26th of July Movement later reformed along communist lines, becoming the Communist Party in October 1965. 

The Communist Party, now headed by Castro's brother Raúl, continues to govern Cuba today.The Cuban Revolution had powerful domestic and international repercussions. In particular, it reshaped Cuba's relationship with the United States, which still maintains a trade embargo against Cuba as of 2016, although efforts to improve diplomatic relations have gained momentum in recent years. In the immediate aftermath of the revolution, Castro's government began a program of nationalization and political consolidation that transformed Cuba's economy and civil society. The revolution also heralded an era of Cuban intervention in foreign military conflicts, including the Angolan Civil War and the Nicaraguan Revolution.

The official version of the Cuban government about the meaning of the shapes and colors of the cuban flag says that the blue stripes refer to the three old divisions of the island, the two white to the strength of the independentist ideal, the red triangle stands for equality, fraternity and freedom as well as for the blood split in the strugle for independence and the lone star symbolizes the absolute freedom among the peoples

Initial ideas for visuals were inspired by the Cuban flag. By incorporating aspects of the flag (colours, stripes, triangle, star) the nationality of the brand will be very obvious to audiences. The blue is complimentary to the golden brown liquid that will be in the bottle.

I experimented with how I could take each component of the flag and re-use it for the design of the bottle. The red triangle seemed like the best area to use as main component of the label. The blue and white stripes could be used to brighten the design up.

 If the rum needs to have heritage, it seems appropriate to create quite decorative type that fits with the heritage of Cuba. although this is fitting, it lacks the impact that is required for the small space on the label. Due to the story behind the rum, it is more appropriate to use rustic hand-rendered or screen printed styled lettering.

I began brainstorming from scratch with the rustic, screen printed style in mind. I began using the flag as it was with the addition of a textured layer to make it look screen printed.

By rotating the triangle 30 degrees  I have to a more balanced space to place the type and still incorporate the star. The rotation of the flag it wraps around the bottle in an interesting. The only issue with this is that it way cause any text on the back of the bottle warped and hard to read. 

Because of this, I chose to take all text from the bottle aside from the front space and make a tag info book which contains more information on the rum.

Instead I have used this space to place the most iconic symbol associated with the cuban revolution.
The addition of the slogan 'the rebels rum' really ties the concept behind the brand together.

The design lacked depth ad impact. To add depth and interest the the label, I have laser cut a stamp styled border to fit with the fact it is imported rum and has travelled.

In the white space on the back and of the label I saw this as an opportunity to bring through imagery of the brands heritage. A map of Cuba in this detail is fitting with the themes of the history of Cuba.

Info found at: http://www.absolutad.com/absolut_about/history/story/

They were aiming high; they had set their sights on the US market, the most competitive vodka market in the world, but also the most lucrative. The US consumes more than 60% of all vodka produced in the western world. Consumption patterns in the US showed that while overall spirits consumption was decreasing, consumption of premium vodka was increasing. The decision was made to market Absolut Vodka as a premium product with a long tradition, meant for a discerning consumer. It was the first time in this century that Sweden had exported any alcoholic beverage on such a large basis.

At first, the ideas centered around the traditional Swedish origins of the brand. There were a number of early suggestions including "Swedish Blonde Vodka", with pillaging Vikings on the label and "Royal Court Vodka", a frosted carafe. There was even a bottle wrapped in paper.

None of these ideas was felt to adequately communicate the product and its tradition. Marketing surveys carried out showed that the time was definitely right for a premium vodka. There was a clearly discernible consumer trend towards "white" spirits as opposed to "brown" spirits; clearer spirits were seen as being purer and healthier. There was a niche for premium vodka waiting to be developed. But the question of how to package and market it still remained.

 American experts were called in. They recommended modern-looking packaging with a bright, colorful label that would stand out on the shelf. They recommended a royal touch, mimicking so many of the "Czar themes" on the market at the time. The Swedish team was less than thrilled. Gradually, they came to realize that the answer was much the same as the concept created 100 years earlier by Lars Olsson Smith.

The breakthrough came when a bottle was finally chosen. Like many breakthroughs it came purely by chance and in retrospect seems almost too obvious.

 Advertising man Gunnar Broman was looking through an antique shop window in Stockholm's "Old Town" when he saw an old Swedish medicine bottle, a cultural icon was unchanged for more than a hundred years. The bottle was elegant, different, simple and very Swedish. In the 16th and 17th centuries vodka had been sold in pharmacies as medicine to cure everything from colic to the plague.

The choice was a stroke of genius. Several Swedish designers were given the job of helping the Absolut Vodka team further develop the bottle. It had been decided that there should be no label to hide the crystal clear contents. After much discussion and several prototypes the team came to the conclusion that some kind of colored lettering was required. Blue was decided upon as a the most visible and attractive color, the color that is still used today for the famous Absolut Vodka logo.

Absolut vodka has been around since the late nineteenth century, but the Absolut most of us know was propelled to fame by their iconic campaign with ad agency TBWA, which ran for a mind-boggling 25 years. If you were around in the ’80s and ’90s, chances are you saw the ads somewhere – plastered on a billboard, stamped on the back of a magazine. It didn’t matter if you were a legal drinker or an elementary school kid collecting them – you saw the ads, you admired them. This was the rare marketing campaign that was culturally appreciated. The ads were both visually adamant yet predictable and wonderfully simple. You remember them, don’t you? Each one featured a depiction of an Absolut bottle with some sort of theme, then the theme stated explicitly under the picture.

The ads were works of genuine artistry. Indeed, Absolut commissioned Andy Warhol and other prominent artists to design branded creations for the Swedish vodka. Absolut was the vodka for artists and musicians – rich artists and musicians – and those who aspired to live like them. The ads showed sophistication and luxury, but it was always a subtle luxury, a sort of alternative coolness. It was even referenced in Rent’s song La Vie Boheme, “To Absolut – to choice – To the Village Voice…” It was the vodka equivalent of a hippy in a Porsche: opulence with a soul, or, alternatively, corporate bohemianism. However you want to think of it, the ad campaign worked. Absolut was cool. U.S. sales jumped from 10,000 cases sold in 1980, to 4.5 million cases sold in 2000.

Grey Goose has never outsold Absolut in the U.S. according to Euromonitor, but it is coming progressively closer to doing so. Perhaps this is in part due to Goose gaining more cultural visibility than Absolut from the early twenty-first century to today. Absolut concluded their epic TBWA campaign, in part because, as Tåhlin told me when I recently visited the Elyx house, “all good things must come to an end,” because digitization was turning print ads progressively more obsolete, but perhaps, also because “artsy” advertising was no longer resonating with their target demographic. It’s no coincidence that Goose’s popularity coincided with the age of reality television. A new trend had started: the trend of obviousness, putting everything out on the table, and shamelessly showing off. Remember, this was a time when labels were king. To wear Abercrombie & Fitch and its offshoots was to don a status symbol. What was actually good about the clothes, the vodka, and Paris Hilton? No one really knew, but that wasn’t the point. You were paying for a name, not a valued product.

Info found at: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/01/jack-daniels-secret-the-history-of-the-worlds-most-famous-whiskey/250966/

The character of Jack Daniel's, the whiskey with the iconic black-and-white label on the equally iconic square bottle, is inextricably bound up in the distinctive character of Jack Daniel, the brand's founder and first master distiller. 

A physically diminutive man only five feet two inches tall, Jack Daniel devoted his outsized personality to the ideal of making a whiskey that, thanks to charcoal filtering and other factors, he could be proud to sell at a premium price. In the 1870s, Daniel had lots of competitors around Lynchburg, Tenn., in distilling whiskey filtered through charcoal. He wanted his whiskey to represent something special. So he used only the iron-free cave spring water on his property and the finest grains, mellowed his whiskey by filtering it through ten feet of sugar maple charcoal, and changed the charcoal out more often to produce a more consistent and better whiskey.

Until the 1950s, sales of Jack Daniel's grew almost entirely through word of mouth, boosted by occasional media attention. In 1951 Fortune published an article on Jack Daniel's that chronicled its growth and appeal to such disparate figures as the 1950 Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner, British prime minister Winston Churchill, and Hollywood director John Huston. A similar 1954 article in True, one of the most popular magazines of its day, put even greater emphasis on its being the favorite drink of entertainment celebrities, such as Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason, and Ava Gardner. Sinatra called Jack Daniel's "nectar of the gods," and he sometimes wore a blazer with a patch for an imaginary "Jack Daniel's Country Club."

"The first modern ad for Jack Daniel's," says Nelson Eddy, the brand historian, "was a small black-and-white ad simply pointing people to read a magazine article."

What is especially interesting about Jack Daniel's beginning to advertise regularly is that demand then exceeded supply. "From the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, it was on allocation," Eddy said. "The sales representatives would literally go into an establishment and let them know how many bottles or cases they could have. When other companies would pull back from advertising, Jack Daniel's spent money on ads to tell people they couldn't get it."

The approach followed a 1955 one-page marketing plan drafted at the behest of Art Hancock, the brand's first marketing director, and Winton Smith, its first national sales director, who envisioned a future based on the heritage that Jack Daniel defined. The one-page plan, Nelson says, "codified Jack Daniel's as authentic, made by real people in an out-of-the-way place." Their ads are distinctive not only for what they say but also for what they show: "black-and-white photography of these people in Lynchburg, Tennessee, who aren't in smoking jackets, [but] work clothes they wear every day to make the whiskey."

Ever since that one-page marketing plan, there's been a singular focus on telling the lore and legend around Jack Daniel's. The stories use Lynchburg and its people but the takeaway isn't Lynchburg. It's those universal messages about pride in being independent, making your own way in the world, and standing for something authentic. The special role of Lynchburg in the Jack Daniel's brand experience led to opening the Jack Daniel Distillery to public tours. More than 200,000 people now visit the distillery every year.

While Jack Daniel's remained available only on allocation through the 1970s, popular culture continued to associate it with maverick independence. Paul Newman's antihero title character in the 1963 movie Hud drinks only Jack Daniel's, and rock musicians of the 1960s and 1970s gravitated to it just as Frank Sinatra did. No celebrities have been photographed more often holding, or next to, a Jack Daniel's bottle than rock stars Keith Richards and Slash. The biggest- selling song of 2010, "Tik Tok," by Ke$ha, includes a verse about brushing her teeth with Jack Daniel's. Nelson Eddy says, "When Hollywood scriptwriters want to use short-hand to show that a character is somebody to reckon with, they still put Jack Daniel's in their hands."

Jack Daniel's made a positive out of having to go on allocation, but it didn't want to frustrate large numbers of customers permanently. The challenge was to increase supply of an artisan-made product. Brown-Forman tore down the existing distillery and built bigger facilities on the same site, while the distillery employees continued to go about their work in the open air, walking on temporary wooden catwalks built around the still. Jack Daniel's then grew into a global brand, almost tripling sales from 1973 to 1986. To support this growth, Jack Daniel's invested more in its archetypal Lynchburg-focused advertising, which continued to resonate with consumers. It also began to engage in an active way with popular culture through sponsorships. The now famous Jack Daniel's barbecue competition dates back to the 1980s. In the 2000s Jack Daniel's began sponsoring motor racing teams in the United States and Australia. In September 2010 they began a campaign to establish a U.S. national holiday in honor of Jack's birthday, including a bus tour from Lynchburg to Washington, D.C.

For July 4, 2011 Jack Daniel's launched a sweeping, multimedia initiative to celebrate the independent American spirit. My favorite poster from this campaign reads, "56 men signed the Declaration of Independence, one man put it in a bottle."