SPREADING THE BRANDS WINGS TO ACCELERATE GLOBAL GROWTH
Naked Grouse had become the fastest-growing contemporary blended whisky within the category, seeing double-digit growth over consecutive years. Our next challenge was to embrace the brands independent spirit, completely cut all ties to its Famous Grouse past and accelerate the brands global growth – building on the successes from the initial launch in 2017.
BRAND STRATEGY BASED ON CONSUMER INSIGHT AND BUSINESS NEEDS
Leading the brand strategy, underpinned with strong consumer insight, Kinship Creative revised and re-energised the brand proposition, brand world, brand messaging, product story and packaging design. The new identity and packaging design was driven as part of a strategic business need, to focus on the premium product story and to cement, the brand’s independence ‘To Live Naked’, free from convention.
A NEW BRAND ICON AND BRAND NAME
A big hurdle was the need to make this brand independent of its Famous Grouse heritage in a way that was successful for brand growth but did not reduce recognition for its current consumers. This was not a small task as this involved identifying the need for a new brand icon and brand name as part of the process. The evolved name Naked Malt reinforces the quality credentials of the award-wining liquid, which uses some of the finest Scottish single malts – matured in a first filled Naked Oloroso sherry casks.
Inspired by the Naked Malt cask story, the new bottle design is beautifully crafted with an Oloroso sherry cask embossed on the bottle in a way that increases the standout more than the grouse previously did. The naked bottle remains transparent to showcase the liquid, and a foot label was introduced to increase the product story, premium cues and to carry the signature from Naked Malt Master Blender, Diane Stuart.
SUCCESSFUL NEW MARKET EXPANSION AND EXISTING MARKET GROWTH
The brand is expanding into more and more global markets (currently 74 in total) and exceeding growth expectations in established markets. It has demonstrated even stronger than expected growth in existing markets such as the Nordics where there was apprehension over changing the design due to the recognition of the grouse. Exceptional growth has come from new markets such as China, which have largely been attributed to Naked Malt’s more premium 100% recycled packaging design.
