Method and Madness

Create a new brand with a distinct philosophy.

And do it in 16 weeks with a tight-knit team of distillers, marketers and agency partners. We love great questions, and Brendan and the team in Irish Distillers know how to pose big ones. This was a remarkable challenge and an amazing opportunity. Looking at category futures; upcycling existing local and global research; Identifying the high potential insights that we felt could, if we executed against them brilliantly, be the start of something wonderful, all clearly demonstrated the simple fact that the market was bonkers – distilleries and breweries popping up everywhere.

It felt like every opportunity had already been seized.

But then we visited the distillery in Midleton and, guided by the distilling team, considered an incredible array of whiskeys and finishes and ideas and ages and styles that one would never associate with the category that we came away with the bones of an idea.

It was when the team came together in the jump! offices in Dublin for the first brand creation day that we first shared the initial idea of creating a brand that played on the intersections of Love, Art and Science, inspired by the creativity of the Midleton team and an emerging global interest in science as a point of fascination for consumers. It also took us away from the tropes of overt masculinity, Gen Z hipsterism; joker-in-the-pack; rebelliousness and so on.

Now we had a brand that celebrated the creative truth of its Masters and Apprentices (all those blends and finishes!) and celebrated the discoveries of art and science-like combinations of maturation and finishing. We have a radical brand purpose and DNA that guides all our actions, from design to innovation pipeline management. The design agency brought all of this to life with some fantastic packaging and visualisation, spurred on, as we all were, by a client team in possession of a clear vision; wonderfully open minds and some of the finest whiskeys on the planet.

Now, here’s one of its finest brands.