Service
Brand positioning
Capabilities
Brand expression audit
Leadership workshop
Brand modelling
Brand manifesto
Design inspiration
Design partner
Denomination
Duration
2 months
Challenge
How to help a family-owned business articulate its brand positioning to drive consistency, distinctiveness and engagement.
Approach
Total immersion into the brand, its people and its founders’ beliefs, identifying and articulating the fundamental truth at the heart of the brand.
Meet Yalumba
Yalumba is Australia’s oldest family-owned winery, founded in 1849 by Samuel Smith, an English brewer who had emigrated to South Australia to provide for his large family. Determined to create a legacy, he cultivated a vineyard which he named ‘Yalumba’, an indigenous Australian word for ‘all the land around’.
Now one of the most respected names in the global wine industry, Yalumba is recognised for leadership in varietals such as viognier, for pioneering the cabernet shiraz blend, and known for their fiercely independent spirit, their respect for the land and their commitment to their community. Yalumba’s wines are sold around the world, ranging from ultra-premium releases such as ‘The Caley’, to the exciting and affordable Y Series.
THE CHALLENGE
The brand DNA had not been articulated
Like many family-owned businesses, Yalumba’s DNA is truly unique, epitomised by the charismatic characters who have passed it down from generation to generation. But, another common trait of many family-owned businesses, this DNA had not been clearly articulated. Nor explicitly connected with the brand’s positioning and expression.
The character was tangible — in the ether, calling from the winery’s walls. But too much was left to interpretation. To individual ‘feel’. This manifested in a fuzzy brand understanding and expression. This wasn’t helped by an increasingly broad portfolio of wines without a coherent architecture, with some ranges also lacking a sharp raison d’être. The visual equities weren’t clearly defined, either, meaning packaging and communications were not punching through, leading to confused consumers and retailers unclear about what Yalumba stood for.
ACHIEVEMENTS
A platform for brand expression
Working hand in hand with Denomination, Yalumba’s design partner, we defined and articulated the distinctive ideas at the heart of the brand: its essence, its promise, its differentiators and its personality.
We captured this in a model, in a manifesto and in a clearly defined set of visual principles. Together, these elements created a platform for brand expression across all touchpoints — whether packaging design, communications or the visitor experience at the winery.
Key learning: getting under the skin of a brand
Yalumba’s six generations of winemaking heritage abounded with authentic details to discover, much of it very sensitive, precious and nuanced. No wonder it had been so difficult to capture and articulate.
So, we spent four days eating, drinking and sleeping the brand. We stayed at the ancestral family home, built in1860 and full of antiques, artefacts and heirlooms, chronicling the family’s storied history, including their globetrotting botanical tours. Outside, we were guided through the celebrated vines Samuel Smith first planted in the moonlight with the help of his 12-year-old son centuries before. Today’s winemakers taught us the Yalumba winemaking philosophy and practices, and told us about their industry-leading programs like the Old Vine Charter. They took us to the wine room, where we spent time tasting and chatting, feeling like part of the extended Yalumba family. We interviewed vintners, vignerons and negociants. We visited the archives and wandered through the cellars. We knocked on competitors’ cellar doors and happily drank their wine. There was even a spot of cricket on the lawn. And husbands and wives to meet, furniture and architecture to admire, surrounded by a landscape of beautiful colours.
And we compressed all this, and more, into a series of observations which we presented to the leadership at our first workshop.
Key learning: articulating the magic “je ne sais quoi”
How can you put words to something as intangible as six generations of family history, a winemaking philosophy, the charisma and character of a winery without losing the magic?
The job of the strategist is close to that of the story-telling sommeliers in Yalumba’s Wine Room. They bring the aroma, feel and character of a fine dry red to life with a series of evocative adjectives, metaphors, associations, even personal memories, in an effort to connect their drinking guests to the sensations they are likely experiencing.
There’s no formula for success here, but there are some principles. Like any design process, it needs to be approached holistically from all angles, colliding rational and emotional, visual and verbal. In the end, it needs to be clear and simple, memorable and genuinely exciting. For Yalumba, we developed a manifesto, backed up by a brand model and a set of visual principles which demonstrate what words mean for expression and behaviour – a great combination of rational and emotional tools, perfectly connected and brilliantly articulated.
