01
Case Study · 01 Penfolds · 2018

The icon, unburied.

Repositioning an Australian icon as a luxury house, after years of being sold in the U.S. as the bottle next to the kangaroo.

Brief → Penfolds House & Best Dressed Somm
The Work

One campaign across digital, events and PR, including a three-day New York mansion takeover and an Instagram contest that turned the trade into the campaign.

RFID-tracked tastings, intimate trade dinners, a Best Dressed Somm contest that flooded the feed with the right faces, and a sales blitz that turned attention into placements.

Penfolds has been making wine since 1844, and Grange has been Australia's benchmark red since the 1950s. Our job was to make that legible to an American buyer.

Watch the campaign: Penfolds House recap →
115%
YoY sales lift
7.4M
Earned impressions
3
Day NYC mansion takeover
Gold
Reggie · Best digital campaign
Recognition Gold Reggie · Beverage Dynamics' Best Digital Campaign · Featured in Wine & Spirits 2018–2019
02
Case Study · 02 19 Crimes · 2017–2019

The label that talked back.

A quirky $10 wine became the fastest-growing wine brand in America once its convicts started talking.

Brief → Living Wine Labels AR launch
The Work

An augmented reality app that let every label come alive and tell its convict's story. The bottles became the campaign.

Strategy, brand voice, and launch architecture for the first AR-activated wine label in the U.S. market. Point a phone at any label and the convict on it would start telling you about their crime.

Within 24 months, 19 Crimes was the fastest-growing wine brand in America by dollar volume.

500%
Brand awareness lift
#1
Fastest-growing wine brand · US
1M+
App downloads
4
Industry awards
Recognition Effie Gold · Shorty Award · Adweek Brand Genius · Drinks Business Innovator of the Year 2017–2019
03
Case Study · 03 Beaulieu Vineyard · 2019

A $1,500 magnum that sold out.

We repositioned Napa's first great cabernet house and proved the luxury tier still had room at the top.

Brief → Georges de Latour reserve launch
The Work

The reserve launch was built on the founder's real story. Georges de Latour kept BV alive through Prohibition by selling sacramental wine to the Catholic Church.

Editorial-grade brand book, intimate on-premise dinners in six markets, and a magnum allocation released to the trade before the public. There was no paid media and no discounting. The bottle did the work.

Six months after launch, the entire allocation had sold and BV Georges de Latour landed on Wine Spectator's Top 100, back in a conversation it had been quietly absent from for a decade.

Watch the campaign: Georges de Latour 80th →
$1.5k
Per magnum, retail
6mo
To sell out allocation
Top 100
Wine Spectator listing
0
Dollars of paid media
Recognition Wine & Spirits "Top 100 Wineries" · Robb Report Best of the Best · Decanter cover feature 2019
04
Case Study · 04 Bhang · Cannabis

From fairly enjoyable to ridiculously fun.

A legacy cannabis brand had gone stale after a decade. We dug the essence back up, rebuilt the system around it, and put a "Bhite Me" voice on the pack.

Brief → Bhang · repositioning & brand voice
The Work

We refined the brand essence to "transform the fairly enjoyable into the ridiculously fun." New packaging, new social voice, and a "Bh" wordplay that turned the legacy name into a handle.

We interviewed accounts and consumers to find the truth underneath the marketing. The category had drifted into wellness language that was earnest, beige and indistinguishable, while Bhang's customers wanted permission to enjoy themselves.

So we gave the brand its mouth back and repositioned it around fun, then built the packaging, the trade pitch and the social voice to match. Month one in market brought a 48% volume lift and 25% account growth.

48%
Month-1 volume lift
25%
Month-1 account growth
10+
Years legacy brand
01
Repositioning, no relaunch
And Many More
A partial list of brands and houses across twenty-five years.
Ask about a specific brand →
Penfolds
19 Crimes
Beaulieu Vineyard
Mission Hill Family Estate
Cîroc
Captain Morgan
Matua
Diageo
Treasury Wine Estates
The Mark Anthony Group
Start by drawing the line

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To be, rather than to seem