Macallan
The Macallan isn’t just a luxury whisky, but it is a luxury brand. And its uncompromising focus on excellence needed to be reflected across a wider application of the brand beyond the product. Its story of excellence needed
to be told through its iconography, its primary and secondary brand assets, its value-added packaging, its gifting experiences, and throughout its brand story.
The Macallan’s uncompromising focus on crafting with ‘necessary excellence’ is rooted in the brand’s Six Pillars and the choices they have made to make the world’s most perfect whisky. Through our visit to the distillery we learnt that these choices are a gift, whether it is the curiously small stills they use or the exceptional oak casks in which the whisky is matured.
These foundations tones encompassed a strong sense of place at the heart of the distillery and the estate, together with a long experience of distilling and maturing a single malt whisky. This brand is not about heather, leather and weather, but about understated luxury, about taking time, and making the call to be more.
Based on the Six Pillars of excellence, and encompassing the iconic Macallan triangle shape, we created a series of icons to symbolise the story of the product process.
These icons helped to form the idea behind the packing structure and gave more meaning to the iconic triangle.
Our structural design had to feel unique, and bring together the organising idea of ‘a moment in time’, the iconic triangle and the Six Pillars. The pack has to work hard in a busy environment, delivering standout, engaging customers while feeling true to the brand’s history.
“Our global audience are united by their ambition, intelligence and appreciation of the finer things in life. They don’t need advertising to spell everything out for them – that’s not the behaviour they’re used to seeing from luxury brands. They want to discover things for themselves. We are a global brand with a global point of view, which is about having the wisdom to spot the risk worth taking – and the bravery to follow it through. The work sidesteps the ‘clichés of heather, leather and weather.”