We were asked to design a wine label for our client THAT Place Projects that would be sold at all three restaurants: Tourist Home, Annex Cocktail Lounge, and Tinderbox Kitchen. The challenge was this: how do we create a label representing all four brands (three restaurants, one restaurant group) when they are all so different from one another?
Ultimately we settled on words. The premise behind the name THAT Place Projects (besides being an acronym derived from the first letters of all three restaurants) is that people often refer to their favorite places by saying "Remember that place we went to that was so awesome?" or "What's the name of that place we love so much?" So we hid the names of each restaurant in the scrambled letters.
Next, we needed to find a way to celebrate the wine itself, and the poster we created below speaks to the DNA behind the wine, the restaurants, the vineyard, the winemaker, and the people behind the making of the red blend.
Below is the campaign that represents the spirit of the wine. Pictured here are THAT Place Projects owners Kevin Heinonen and Nick Williams, Mike Schmitz, Chief Culinary Director of THAT Place Projects with the winemaker John Sutcliffe. It was through many meals at John's table at the winery that the inspiration behind the wine was formed, and the partnership with Sutcliffe solidified. John Sutcliffe is damn near a literary figure in real life, a living breathing collision between Hemingway and Mick Jagger every story he tells is absorbed into the essence of his wine as are the visions of the restaurateurs whose hopes and dreams are expressed in every taste they create. That partnership is, in essence, everything the wine represents. So we designed a wine glass holding not just wine, but the "IDEA" of the wine, represented in this intimate conversation captured one evening by chance.
Marketing Secret: Don't half-ass the art. Or storytelling. Self reflect. Go inside and figure out your WHY and represent it everywhere. Your WHY is your DNA. Without it, nothing can exist. Anything else is artificial, superficial, and irrelevant. Your best stories lie within you.
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