Vodka is traded in the highest volume of any spirit in the world; to say the market is cluttered is an understatement. Our client came to us with a name – Ariki, meaning "royalty, paramount chief, chieftain, lord, leader, aristocrat”. Their Cook Island and New Zealand heritage served as the fulcrum for launching the brand with Pacific Island's positioning in the global marketplace.

Our research showed that we needed to take a challenger brand approach against the behemoths and position Ariki in a niche - the ultra-premium spirits sector. Whilst Ariki was a new brand to market, we needed to quickly seed heritage and premium cues to make the brand feel like it was long-established, targeting global audiences including the US, Saudi Arabia, the UK, Hong Kong, Australasia and the Pacific.

Our approach was to use the Ariki illustration as the centre of our storytelling and a prominent feature of our packaging design and brand touchpoints. We collaborated with renowned international artist Anna Crichton to illustrate Ariki in a style evoking the spirit of pioneering and legends. Our challenger approach meant every brand touchpoint had to deliver some form of storytelling - from the bottle packaging through to the shipper boxes and all point of sale and communications.

The visual presence of our Ariki reflected through the bottle on a reverse-printed label gives the Vodka & Gin an immediate point of difference in the market, in what is more a traditionally styled category. The stereotypical European simplicity in the category has been broken with this illustrative execution.

Brand Strategy
Visual Identity
Branding
Packaging Design
Illustration - (Anna Crichton)
Visual Communications