Bacardi Classic Cocktails Relaunch
After spending years reformulating their recipes and ingredients Bacardi had the closest to fresh and best tasting ready-to-serve cocktails on the market. They however also had old packaging which carried with it old stigmas. After addressing the contents of the bottles and their labels the brand looked to us to relaunch the Bacardi Classic Cocktail line. The reformulations had stripped away many ingredients leaving only the essentials (natural flavors, juices, rum and cane sugar) and we wanted to convey the simplicity of the recipes as well as their new larger than life taste profiles. The images above were the selected key art layouts which graphically depict the flavor cues and the simple communication strategy on which we landed.

Bacardi Classic Cocktails Relaunch (cutting room floor)
A proposed direction for the relaunch of Bacardi Classic Cocktails where we wanted to explore the magical world in which such an impossibly fresh tasting ready-to-serve cocktail could be created and bottled. While our demographic did skew slightly female the butterflies were but placeholders. Imagine those butterflies as having mint leaf wings, had this execution been selected we would have had those 3D rendered so deliciously.

Two Page Benedictine Ad for Esquire Magazine
To celebrate Benedictine’s 500th anniversary our clients approached us to develop a two page spread which had been secured in Esquire. Pairing off into traditional art director / writer teams Eric Flinn and I decided to call upon one of the Benedictine monks’ other and less successful pursuits: alchemy. While the monks were consistently experimenting with different mysterious elixirs they clearly were on to something when they created this liqueur as it’s still being consumed half a millennium later. Tying the spirit’s creation to alchemy provides both a sense of wonder as well as a time frame surrounding its creation.       

Drambuie Ad
Preceding the proliferation of honey flavored whiskeys there was Drambuie, an aged scotch flavored with honey and spices. The brand suffered from low recognition as well as general ignorance regarding its taste and how it’s best consumed. Tasked with these challenges the brand asked us to develop an awareness/educational ad to run in several industry publications. Above is one proposed direction in which we hero the bottle to aid recognition, surround it with prominent flavor cues to educate at a glance, ground it on a piece of lush green turf (as a nod to its Scottish roots) and then introduced a bee attracted to our sweet honey flavor. The messaging speaks directly to taste and is typeset to emulate the viscosity and flow of honey if it were waved from a honey wand.   

Bacardi Cuba Libre / Halloween Programs
Once upon a time (yearly) Bacardi had an identity crisis. In the midst of one of these crises the above-the-line agency wasn’t able to forge the look of the brand in time for print deadlines. Given the same direction and limited assets we were able to devise a look that answered the clients’ ask for a graphical approach that highlights the bottle while incorporating the provenance of the brand and their epic brand story. Photography, other than that of the products, was to be avoided. The previous year’s look was a very flat aesthetic that generally featured a bottle, headline, black background and nothing else. We wanted to approach this project as a more visually energetic evolution of the previous look in an attempt to maintain some visual consistencies. First out of the gate was the Cuba Libre program that ran over the summer. The visual on the left was developed and well received. The following program, rolling out that fall, was Halloween. We worked up the visual on the right to spur on a greater conversation with the brand about the rigidity/plasticity of identities and building visual equity. Two years prior their look had been driven by colorful photography, the previous year had been all black everything, Halloween makes sense to be black-centric, seems like a no brainer to marry the two while setting the precedent of flexibility within the identity. Our stance being that a balance should be struck between consistency (equity is good) and flexibility (thematic programs require visual themes) and that balance should be maintained long enough that over time the consistencies will become ownable to the brand while the flexibility would allow each program to be more targeted. In the end they ran the Cuba Libre art verbatim with varying headlines the rest of the year, can’t win them all I guess.  

Disaronno Summer Program
Disaronno wanted to run an educational program during the summer that would illustrate the plethora of flavors with which their product paired. As this was exclusively an in-store program (not in bars) we chose to target the female at-home mixologist. Knowing that our female mixologist is inclined to entertain, and when entertaining she strives to impress, we wanted to give her quick and easy ways to customize her cocktails with fresh ingredients. The proposed approach above is meant to come across as light and airy, being back lit so the product and cocktails glow, while attractively displaying a cornucopia of suggested flavor pairings. While this program never came to fruition we had intended to shoot these cocktails with more ornate and brag-worthy garnishes our host could create in a further attempt to customize and impress, which the headline speaks to. The sub headline is a reference to Disaronno’s proprietary cap which is engineered to continue spinning up and off the neck when given a spin.    

Bacardi Pineapple Fusion Launch Art
The (then?) latest in a long line of flavored rums by Bacardi, Pineapple Fusion was unique in that it was the first to combine two flavored rums with one another. Truly an exercise in semantics but nonetheless “unique” in that it’s not a rum with two flavors but two individually flavored rums fused together. Following me? Great, so while we may have been splitting hairs to get here it’s still fun creating visual identities. In this case the client very much wanted to focus on the fusion aspect. Every variant of Bacardi’s flavored rum line features an abstraction of the flavoring fruit on their labels, in this case pineapple and coconut. Furthering the trend of abstraction I wanted to explore what kind of visual territory could be created from the combination of “fusion”, which conjures energy/science connotations, and pineapples. The two headline approaches are meant to play off of the “groundbreaking” nature of the product and the energy angle.    

Martini & Rossi Program
When their above-the-line agency of record could not deliver a visual identity on the required timeline Martini & Rossi turned to our team for help. Targeting a 20-something female demographic, which we helped refine, we were asked to create a look and a program that was unique and ownable to Martini & Rossi. Of most importance to the brand was that we convey their Italian heritage while reinforcing sexiness and stylishness as brand attributes. The final creative was an homage to Martini & Rossi’s iconic turn of the century posters.
(Art Director: Rebecca Lee)

The program we developed and sold in hinged largely on our expanded understanding of “Amanda”, our demographic’s persona. Amanda was identified as a 20-something urban dweller who is extremely social, fashionable, aspirational and a borderline foodie. With that knowledge we began identifying young Italian fashion designers who have a significant following as potential partners. The designer would create a unique dress for the brand to be featured on our model and would be credited on all elements. Additionally we would collaborate with the designer to create a mobile boutique, aka fashion truck, that would frequent popular brunch spots ... thereby combining virtually all of Amanda’s passions: food, friends and fashion. It would also be an opportunity to sample the sparkling wines, achieving a grand crescendo of Amanda elation. As it worked out, budgets were slashed and we only did some social content to support the in-store signage. BUT it was very attractive content that resonated with Amanda’s aspirational Pintrest fantasies.
(Art Director: Mikey Romano / Rebecca Lee)