ROLE:

Here&There Collab Series Strategy, Brand and Identity Development

Copywriting

Package Design

Illustration

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Dillon’s Rum Collab

For the first within the Here&There collaboration series, Geoff Dillon travelled multiple times to Cuba to work with the world famous Cuban distillers behind Ron Vigia and the Cuban Institute of Rum — a national treasure for Cuba.

After a year of visits and sharing ideas, Idiana Blanco, ICIDCA’s master blender created these two incredible rums for Dillon’s to share with their audience within the Here&There series.

The two authentic Cuban Rums — 8yr & 18yr represent a historic partnership between Cuba and Canada. Never before has Cuba exported a rum for a partnership and collaboration.

As part of the project and strategy, Insite developed a label program that could work for a series of projects following the rum which is first of many more from around the world. See Here&There strategy below.

The rum specific labels were designed to celebrate Cuba as the primary focus. Cuban colours, flag and motifs were designed to capture a Cuban feel while also to fit comfortably within the Dillon’s brand family and identity program.

The labels across the series will all be unique but in each release will fit over the same bottle used for all products. These bottles are printed using ACL and tell the story of the Here&There collaboration series and concept of “local from another place”.

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Here&There Collab Series

Dillon’s Small Batch is a distillery who’s heart and vision is in crafting spirits from locally sourced ingredients and realizing the talents and passions of local people; creators, makers, producers, farmers and neighbours — doing great things from a world local to them.

What’s incredible about this philosophy is that it creates community — not just local community, but a broader community assembled of like minds. Not surprisingly, those that share a similar vision and philosophy are drawn to each other on this local common ground and the ideas flow.

Thinking deeply about local; asking what is local, to whom and what are the standards and ethos to uphold we have concluded that local is a promise, approach and practice as much as it is a uniqueness of place that one can taste in the final product.

Local is about the confidence in identity, transparency and honesty. It’s about the end audience knowing the stories of source, place and the people where ingredients and materials originate. It’s about you trusting that the producers of these ingredients and components made every effort to stick to their hearts and vision that local can be a viable practice worth pursuing.

It’s among this new family of producers, growers, farmers and makers that Dillon’s has found a broader sense community and idea sharing. And naturally along with this friendship, a desire to collaborate as a means to cross-pollinate their learnings and products but most of all to share each other's rich stories and learnings with their own audiences that believe in and appreciate local.

In order for Dillon’s to participate in collaborations with their distant friends and fit these products into the “brand local” positioning of the Dillon’s brand, Insite strategized and development a collaboration series called Here&There — a symbol of the relationship with other local makers and producers.

The fine people at Dillon’s will be crafting batch products with their remote collaborators to bring audiences unique ideas, tastes, stories and experiences. This may mean oranges and lemons from their organic farmer friends in Florida, special collaborative blends of whisky with other small batch maker friends around the world, authentic artisanal spirits of source by master distillers that they will work with to marry their talents and bring home other maker's stories — and much more.

The Here&There symbol on Dillon's products signal the fruits of these collaborations and as people to refer to the stories on the Dillon's website that highlight the adventures and efforts among this community.