KOakoa
Hero brand of a family-owned distillery on the Kāpiti Coast (with a cellar door dangerously close to where I live!), Koakoa is owned by husband and wife duo Chris Barber and Bec Kay. Their award-winning tipples are destined for your wildest cocktail creations. It’s good stuff handmade with good quality New Zealand ingredients, and a good dose of flair.
Just bloody good.
Creative Collateral
Creating collateral that ‘speaks’ for a brand is so important. It allows a connection between the way that a business engages with its clients in a tangible sense, and the values, voice and tone of a brand.
In this case the brief was to create some cards that held cocktail recipes to accompany Koakoa’s bottles of goodness when they are sent on their merry way out to deserving customers.
Instead of these being a one-off moment of creation, I suggested that we took a cohesive approach to what could potentially come in the future. Enter: Koakoa’s Guide to Liquid Happiness.
Strategic Brand Assets
As a big-picture thinker, and an ideas person, I can’t help but have moments of inspiration when I’m working on client projects. In this case, while I was working on a cocktail card destined to accompany bottles of the good stuff, the idea of a “guide to liquid happiness” came to mind. Ultimately, this became the thing that linked each cocktail recipe card cohesively - instead of simply just using the Koakoa logo - and it speaks to Chris and Bec’s wider goals for their brand. It allows them to own their place in the market, while working with their existing brand personality and wording. How did I come up with it? I’m not sure, but perhaps Limoncello was involved.
Design Production
The brief: create a press ad for a spot in a very high profile magazine targeting the wider corporate side of the hospitality industry, but make it Koakoa.
Using the allure of a beachside cocktail picture (speaking to Chris and Bec’s actual location), some words injected with some personality, and a headline carrying a pun to highlight their casual and fun nature, Deacon Rd. worked with a design collaboration partner to bring it all together.
The result is elegant, fun, eye-catching and saying all the right things for this engaging, award-winning brand.
Some words from koakoa
"Bec and I have used Deacon Rd. to bring to life messages for our business, Koakoa. Jess is not only amazingly creative, but also extremely strategic and thorough in the way she creates messages. We also love the values Jess brings to her own business. She is professional, she listens, and she creates amazing collateral.”
— Chris Barber, Director of Koakoa