Silver Cloud 100% agave spirit

“Silver Cloud” an 100% Blue Agave Spirit is an illustrious achievement by Master Distiller Terry Knight of Golden Bay. The product name originated by MagentaDot Brands for the first release of 30 bottles of New Zealand’s first Pure Agave Tequilana Spirit “Silver Cloud” is Terry’s brainchild, it was he who had the long-term vision to make a premium small batch 100% Agave Spirit from agave grown in Golden Bay and distill it in his Kiwi Spirit Distillery in downtown Takaka. TeKiwi was the draft product name Terry tried to use to develop the limited edition first release labelling system for the Art Glass bottles. It transpired that this name was threatened with very costly litigation by the US corporate owners and representatives of premium Tequila brands. TeKiwi was superseded by the brand name “Silver Cloud” which MagentaDot Brands developed.

The name, “Silver Cloud”, the logo and packaging combined to position New Zealand’s first premium 100% Blue Agave Spirit at the premium price point of NZD $1,000 per bottle. This is a branding and packaging project at the high end of the international liquor market for which I was commissioned to create something handmade and special. My branding saw the first release of 30 bottles achieve selling to both a national and global market at the desired $1,000 per bottle price.

30 bottle first release December 2014

To celebrate the first release of 30 bottles and commemorate Terry Knight and Rachel Raine’s extraordinary achievement they commissioned and co-designed an individually hand-blown art glass bottle from Höglund Art Glass of Nelson, New Zealand. The logo, branding and packaging system was hand applied to each bottle and the first batch of 30 were a sequence of individually numbered bottles.

I attended the December 2014 launch to provide hands-on support and document the event for news and social media purposes was highly successful, the first two bottles auctioned at the event sold for NZD $400 and $450 respectively. Subsequent online sales of the remaining 28 bottles from Kiwi Spirit’s store fetched an impressive $1,000 a bottle on the international market.

Carefully considered, well researched brand strategy

MagentaDot Brands was called in to create something special for the brand and packaging. Taking a ground-breaking, authentic premium product such as Silver Cloud to both a national and global marketplace required a well researched, carefully considered and precise touch. A sense of brand heritage needed to be invoked and the packaging design needed to be positioned in such a way that it would appeal directly to today’s premium 100% Blue Agave drinkers.

The brand developed for the limited release launch had to live off the name Terry Knight had originated and the beautiful, individually crafted art glass bottles, no two of which were the same, and enhance them both. So a visual identity that worked with the bottle and enhance each individual bottle’s quirks was crucial. Being art glass they are not symmetrical, none of the bottle’s front or side planes are parallel or flat, nor the neck centred or consistently cylindrical—that along with the extreme fragility of art glass and extraordinary high cost ruled out any form of machine label application or a single self adhesive label with a large surface area.

The identity system leverages the world of Kiwi culture

The brand idea of ‘authentically New Zealand’ bred a communications strategy that leveraged the world of Kiwi culture beginning with MagentaDot Brand’s “Silver Cloud—100% Blue Agave Spirit” positioning tagline.

Is a brand that is a homophone of another brand legal?

The Silver Cloud name which came to supersede the draft name TeKiwi for all marketing and promotional purposes, as I had suspected, being near enough to a homophone of the controlled “T” name infringed on the trademarked and internationally controlled name. As “TeKiwi” is a closely approximate homophone of “T” the name it was swiftly objected to by the legal controllers of the “T” name in the United States and Mexico. So after a short life the answer from the copyright lawyers was NO, TeKiwi is not “legal” and exposed Kiwi Spirit to liability for trademark infringement enforced by the world’s most powerful liquor consortiums. The test for whether or not a mark infringes upon another’s allegedly similar mark is whether or not the similarities of the marks and goods/services create a likelihood of confusion among consumers as to the source of each party’s goods/services.

The Silver Cloud brand lives off and is inspired by the contents of the bottle

Overall the Silver Cloud packaging design developed combines a sense of the authentic with uniquely New Zealand design elements and detailing. Overall the the design lives off the essential richness of Silver Cloud’s individual terroir.

The brand lives off and is inspired by the contents of the bottle. The beverage is pure, smooth, well-rounded, long on the palate and rich with the signature taste of blue agave spirit. The design enables Silver Cloud to stand tall alongside the established international brands of the old Tequila houses owned by mammoth liquor consortiums that produce the majority of Silver, Anejo, and Reposado style Tequilas globally.

Silver Cloud’s initial success suggests it is on the way to become the worlds most recognised and widely consumed Kiwi 100% Blue Agave, and to becoming a style icon—it shines brilliantly placed on a bar next to other premium 100% Agave brands.

The planned first commercial release of 500 bottles planned to be distributed around New Zealand mid 2015 has been cancelled. The workaround solution developed by Kiwi Spirit has been to sell Silver Cloud in the 100ml sample bottle for NZD $70 a bottle, and as with Waitui Single Malt, demand for Silver Cloud has outstripped supply. Silver Cloud will be available again commercially at the end of 2017.

MORE RENAMING AND BRANDING PROJECTS

Credits

Printer: Croft Printing Limited
Copywriter / Name origination: Chrissie Terpstra / Shaun Waugh
Font credits: Meta Bold LF-Caps, Rage Italic