Featured image for The Dieline Awards 2015: 3rd Place Spirits- Haig Club

The Dieline Awards 2015: 3rd Place Spirits- Haig Club

by Elizabeth Freeman on 05/04/2015 | 3 Minute Read

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LOVE was briefed by Diageo’s innovation team to create a credible and authentic new brand that would breathe new life into Scotch.

Inspired by the category’s long lost cool, LOVE created Haig Club, a new single grain Scotch whisky with both style and substance.

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In a category that always defaults to old school design conventions, full of drab browns, greens and greys, Haig Club was designed to be different. Its square profile stands out on the shelf in a brilliant cobalt blue. 

The hue is an echo of the nosing glasses that master blenders use to craft whisky. As such, the blue is a design cue that speaks to tradition, but realised in a very contemporary way. 

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The House of Haig are the world’s oldest Scotch whisky distillers, and so the agency wanted to pay homage to this heritage, but not be burdened by it. 

The copper stopper is further testament to this. A material used in whisky making, the tactile copper is heavy in the hand and inscribed with the family crest, a mark of enduring quality.

While other whiskies rely on complicated provenance stories and tropes of Scotland, Haig Club is beautifully simple. The embossed branding is inspired by antique Victorian glassware. Similarly, the square profile comes from design codes of the couture fashion industry.

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The outer packaging further reflects this spirit of simplicity. The confident, sleek and minimal double fronted pack playfully features the image of the bottle, giving retailers the opportunity to present the pack in interesting ways.

With these elements taken together, the design breaks convention, liberating a category that was once firmly stuck in the past.   

Currently Haig Club is rated the number one best seller in both the whisky and grocery categories on Amazon UK.  At launch it was the number one best seller in alcohol on Amazon UK. Further results have yet to be made public by the client as the Global launch was only in October, but these early signs are very promising. The Drum marketing magazine labelled Haig Club ‘Best New Brand of 2014’ and on reviewing Haig Club, respected whisky authority Dave Broom said, "Forget everything you thought you knew about Scotch".

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Designed by LOVE

Country: United Kingdom

City: Manchester