ROLE:

Brand and Visual Strategy

RTD Can Design & Visual System

Illustration

Copywriting & Copy Direction

BACKGROUND:
About Our Dillon’s Small Batch Distillers Work

In 2011, Insite was asked by the founders of Dillon’s to help them achieve their dream of creating a distillery and successful alcohol brand — to work with them to create their brand strategy, name and naming system, identity system, package design, website, distillery experience and interior.

Within the thinking, we encouraged Dillon’s to approach the Canadian alcohol market as a craft distiller that would be unique in their philosophies and methodologies. We encouraged them to take a risk and create a product that was artisanal instead of mainstream, produced in small batches, using locally sourced ingredients, with a seasonal release focus and with a mission of transparency where ingredients and methods would be clearly described on the labels. At the time, none of this was available in the alcohol industry almost anywhere — making Dillon’s a true vanguard.

To go to market, we strategized that Dillon’s could slide in to a very saturated and locked up Canadian spirits marketplace by winning the hearts of locavores and supporters of Canadian goods while also appealing to the bar industry and mixologists who were growing tired of soulless international spirit brands who had locked up their bar inventories and constrained their creative freedoms. With Dillon’s they could be proud of a high quality local spirit with an honest story that they could confidently convey to their own audience with every inventive cocktail.

The brand strategy and both market strategies were immensely successful and the rest is history. Dillon’s Small Batch Distillers has become an internationally recognized brand that’s loved in many markets globally.

PROJECT OVERVIEW:
As part of our long term working partnership with Dillon’s, we had strategized that Dillon’s could move into the Ready to Drink (RTD) space without compromising its craft oriented brand image. 

If and when this was to be done, we proposed that Dillon’s could start in the ultra-premium end of the pre-mixed cocktail offerings in order to earn its trust around creating quality yet casual every occasion RTDs.

Toward this goal, we first assisted with the strategy, design and launch of their highly successful premium ready to pour “prepared cocktails”, among the first in the market and the only product in the premium category at the LCBO. Then after we completed a major Dillon’s brand and identity refinement in 2022, we designed the immensely popular RTD line of “Real Cocktails” in a can.

The result is that the Dillon’s lines of RTDs are easily the most successful products in the RTD cocktail category, available nationally.