NAKED SPIRITS COFFEE RUM
Strategy // Creative // Branding // Naming // Packaging
Scenario
Naked Spirits was looking to redesign its Mocha Royale Coffee Rum as the first part of an overall brand refresh. It’s the #1 seller in their tasting room but lags far behind in retail sales. Clearly, there was a gap that needed to be closed — people fall in love with the rum's deep, rich, smooth coffee flavor when they can taste it, but that love is not being translated and communicated through the bottle design.
The Practical Approach
The flavored rum category has a reputation for being artificial and syrupy sweet, and rum bottles tend to be over-designed, if we’re being tactful (but we’re not, so we’ll come out and say it — they’re often tacky and can’t find their way out of the tropics).
Our Practically Dangerous Solution
Luckily, Naked Spirits had an ace up its sleeve regarding how the product was distilled. Unlike other coffee-flavored rums, there is nothing artificial about their flavor or product. In fact, Naked Spirits uses coffee beans hand-selected locally from Dubuque Coffee Company, which are then cold brewed with the distilled rum — not water — resulting in a deeper flavor extraction from the beans.
As such, our strategy and design solution was to leverage quality cues from cold-brewed coffee, not the flavored rum category. Our goal was to convey artisan over artificial at every turn.
The design approach features a field of bold color with an icon wallpaper pattern, balancing quality cues and the attitude of the Naked Spirits brand. The design also establishes a template that can be easily extended to other products in their portfolio, creating brand consistency and shelf presence that punches above their weight class — something that’s important for any brand, but certainly critical for a small, up-and-coming distillery.
