With whisky drinking falling across the board in the UK and little signs of a new generation of drinkers coming through, family-owned Ian Macleod Distillers realised it needed to do all it could to bring younger customers into the whisky-drinking fold. So the company brought in design consultancy Navyblue to create a product that would stand out a mile amongst traditional whisky brands, whilst retaining that all-important whisky heritage.
Whisky is a ‘beleaguered category’, claims market research company Mintel. It says that whisky sales will haven fallen 8.5 per cent in volume between 2003 and 2008, largely because the dominant blended Scotch category does not attract younger drinkers and is even losing appeal amongst traditional long-standing customers.
Distillers are rebottling, rebranding and even reformulating blended Scotch in a bid to revive the category, which is currently driving the downward trend in UK whisky volume sales, according to Mintel’s research. Single malts, on the other hand, are considered more hip and may help to keep the UK whisky market in growth in value terms this year.
Sensing an opportunity to tap into a fledgling youth appeal for strong, peaty single malt whiskies, family-owned business Ian Macleod Distillers decided to look at creating a new product with these characteristics, but with a distinctly contemporary style. The company already produces a wide range of blended, malt and aged blend whiskies, as well as premium gins, rums, vodkas and liqueurs. Some are created at its own distillery near Loch Lomond, while other products are bought from separate distilleries and branded and marketed by Ian Macleod.
Most of the company’s whiskies feature traditional packaging and labelling, using designs such as ‘heraldic’ crests and seals and hand-drawn Scottish scenes, with a big emphasis on product heritage and provenance. But managing director Leonard Russell and commercial director Iain Weir realised that they needed to speak a different language to appeal to a younger audience. ‘You can argue that there’s an innate conservatism in the whisky market and we wanted to do something for more modern drinkers,’ says Weir.
The idea for a new product came while Russell was attending the Islay Whisky Festival, where he noticed a following for Islay’s strong, smoky whiskies amongst younger people. So he decided to take a product from the island’s distilleries and package it for a contemporary consumer. ‘We noticed that it attracts a younger, more cult audience and although we don’t own a distillery there, we had a lot of Islay whisky,’ says Weir. ‘But there was no point bringing a me-too product to the market as Islay’s distilleries already have strong brands out there. On the other hand, we didn’t want something that was just gimmicky. So we came up with the basic idea and had the name Smokehead – meaning someone who likes smoky whiskies – and we took this to Navyblue to work on.’
Taking the product premise and the Smokehead name, the designers created a whole brand identity for the whisky, giving it a style which simultaneously breaks the mould of whisky packaging, whilst retaining cues to heritage and provenance. A tactile embossed and debossed outer tin features an array of adjectives that describe the characteristics of the drink inside. Words such as ‘robust’, ‘outrageous’ and ‘vigorous’ evoke the complex and strong flavours of Islay whisky, with its peaty, sweet, smoky and spicy taste. Uniquely, the main label is placed on the rear of the glass bottle, so that these same descriptive terms reflect through the spirit itself.
While Smokehead’s styling is clearly contemporary, the designers used a traditional wooden block letterpress to create the packaging’s typography. This, says Weir, imbues Smokehead with a level of history and tradition, referencing the stamping of the whisky casks. Text on the bottle reading ‘Islay Single Malt Scotch Whisky’ is set in a copper colour, alluding to the copper pot stills used in the distillation process.
‘It’s all done very simply: it literally does what it says on the bottle. The heritage cues are in there, but it’s still very contemporary and quite masculine, which reflects both the product and the audience – it’s easy to understand who it’s for and what it is,’ explains Weir. ‘Most whiskies turn heritage cues up and contemporary cues down; this design does the opposite. For our business and portfolio this is exactly what we needed as we want to be seen as having an idea of the cutting edge and of the future. It also works well for the industry as a whole, as attracting younger audiences is a very hot topic.’
Company: Ian Macleod Distillers, Broxburn, Scotland
Number of employees: Approximately 185
Design group: Navyblue
Budget: ‘A few thousand pounds’
Design services: Brand research, packaging, visual identity