Nude Brand Consulting creates Chivas look

Pernod Ricard’s whisky arm Chivas Brothers is relaunching Scapa, one of its premium single malt brands, under a radical new look created by Nude Brand Consulting.

The 14-year-old Scapa single malt will be replaced by a more premium 16-year-old product in key markets including the UK, Germany, France, Scandinavia and the US next month.

Nude, which is a Pernod Ricard-rostered consultancy, took on the project in July 2006 without a pitch, at the behest of Chivas global malt category brand director Neil Macdonald. The consultancy previously worked with him on the relaunch of Longmorn (DW 1 March 2007).

The idea behind the new packaging is to make the product more relevant globally, and target a younger market to complement its existing ‘connoisseur’ audience, according to Nude creative partner Bernard Gormley. His fellow creative partner Mike Parsonson explains that the original packaging graphics were no longer relevant to the product and needed updating.

‘In terms of graphics, the packaging originally had a lighthouse as one of its visual cues, but when we went on a field visit to Orkney [to research the product], we found that the lighthouse was 15km away [from the distillery] and had no relevance to Scapa as a brand,’ he says.

‘So we tried to uncover some truths and that’s when we came across the Orcadian yole [Nordic boat].’

The graphic and structural elements of the design, with a colour palette of blues and greys, attempt to capture a sense of the Orkney environment, where the Scapa Distillery is based, Parsonson says.

Part of the reason the packaging design has taken so long, says Parsonson, is because of the lengthy process required to develop the bottle prototypes.

‘The bottle is a complete redesign, and as such took a considerable amount of time to go through feasibility tests. It’s quite a radical structure for a whisky bottle. There’s also embossing in the glass,’ he adds.