FINDING THE ‘SPIRIT’ OF TWO NEW BRANDS

BEHIND THE B-A-R

Our first meeting with the founders of B-A-R Brands collided with their launch of two new liquor labels. Based in North Carolina, spirits incubator B-A-R (Bartenders, Artists, and Renegades) creates and commercializes emerging spirits, with a varied portfolio ranging from ready-to-serve liqueurs to small batch liquors. And while all brands under their umbrella share the same company ethos, each spirit has a unique story and therefore needs its own visual language. We quickly developed a natural partnership and got to work.

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**Sunshine Making Waves.** Shot in the waves of Coronado Beach in San Diego, California, we focused on ways to capture real sunlight illuminating the bottle’s orange glass.

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**Photography in Use.** Our goals are to create images that work great on their own and great within any future placements. To deliver this campaign, we showcased how The Reverend Whiskey looks across digital, print, and out-of-home advertising—seen here outside a New York City subway entrance.

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LET THE SUNSHINE IN

The first to launch was Sunshine Punch™ — a ready-to-serve rum cocktail with the nostalgic orange-vanilla profile of a creamsicle (without using the Unilever trademarked “creamsicle”). B-A-R had actually just received marketing photos of Sunshine Punch from another agency. While those first photos showcased the bottle well, they were clean, digital, and lacked the organic playfulness that inherently exists in the brand. We had a different vision. For this brand, we wanted to embrace nostalgia by leaning on film grain, the warmth of human interaction, and (as the name would suggest) true sunshine.

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**Orange Creme.** Featured on the cover of Food & Beverage Magazine. To communicate the bottled-cocktail’s creamsicle flavor, we knew we needed to show the childhood favorite treat. To avoid dripping ice cream in the California summer, our team made wax replicas that allowed us to work on our own timeline instead of the sun’s.

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So, logically, we headed toward the sunshine and across the country from the brand’s founders. San Diego offered sunsets over the ocean, plenty of beachy landscapes to capture the “sun above, sand below” brand, and famous formations of large boulders (perfect for a cocktail photo “on the rocks”).

After capturing a variety of photos and video scenes, we were able to push more of the brand’s feel in post-production. Pushing film grain, warming highlights, and shifting color stories to set a more retro tone made our assets feel like the liqueur tastes. Just as we established Sunshine Punch’s nostalgia, we began working on B-A-R’s next brand – one that called for something more future-focused.

THE ANGEL & THE DEVIL

As B-A-R prepared to launch The Reverend Sour Mash Whiskey™, named for The Reverend Dan Call (who later sold his business to a young Jack Daniel), a new challenge appeared. It became clear that this brand needed to be celebrated as something new, even if its origin story is historic. We asked ourselves, “well, if we ditch the stereotypical ‘whiskey lineage’ angle, what is our new take?” Our answer came from The Reverend himself. As we researched The Reverend’s life, we lingered on the juncture when he was forced to give up his whiskey business because it kept him from his congregation. One phrase became our turning point: "there is a fine line between Saturday night and Sunday morning."

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**Staying Golden.** Styling a scene should always point back to the product and brand. We chose clear, straight glassware to reflect the simple design of the pill-bottle shaped product. We also poured over (pun intended) multiple libraries of books to find the right not-quite-a-bible prop to hint at the liturgical context — settling on one that carries the orange tones of the logo. Finally, we chose less traditional, polished gold barware to accent the label’s gold trim, and emphasize the warm tones of the whiskey itself.

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**Etched in History.** When launching a new product, you take every opportunity to put the brand front and center. To keep The Reverend at the center of our photography, even when the label is not, we built our set with laser-engraved planks, evoking carved whiskey kegs.

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With that spirit in mind, we crafted two visual stories: one to highlight the angel and one to highlight the devil. This juxtaposition of light and dark emphasized the tension between saintly and sinful, allowing us to build visual texture while staying true to the brand. In both light and dark atmospheres, we focused on long amber-colored shadows in high-contrast practical environments. Dark, aged woods suggest the historical context while high-quality, crisp photography planted the brand firmly on modern soil.

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**Lighting a Flatlay.** Lighting glass can be tricky — illuminating the proper color of the liquid without allowing distracting reflections. To light this old-fashioned flatlay, we built a small stage with the bottle silhouette cut out, giving us the ability to light the bottle from beneath.

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**Custom Cocktails.** To showcase their new-to-market whiskey, B-A-R Brands turned to our team (with help from bottle and brand design team Sandstrom Partners) to create, pour, style, and photograph custom on-theme and classic whiskey cocktails. From a classic Manhattan to the “Fire and Brimstone,” from a Kentucky Mule to the “Original Sin,” from an Old Fashioned to the “Holy Fashioned” and beyond. What better way to help a brand establish their voice than to help create how the product is used? And what better production wrap gift than a table full of cocktails...?

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SMALL CHOICES, HUGE IMPACTS

While Sunshine Punch and The Reverend are owned by the same company, and the assets were shot by the same team, these back-to-back projects show how seemingly small choices can make huge impacts in how a story is told.

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**Making a Splash.** Creating images in nature (as opposed to a controlled set) means fighting the elements. While shooting in the ocean waves, we wanted to try a high-shutter-speed water shot that would look as refreshing and the drink feels. After synchronizing oranges, a bottle, a camera, and the right ocean wave, we knew we had made a splash.

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**Making a Different Splash.** Liquid beauty shots are a staple of branded beverages. When planning this shot in a controlled studio, we had the ability to bouce cool-toned light through the tabletop ice cubes, flanking the warm hues of the bottle and whiskey. And to protect our book prop from further damage, the controlled environment allowed us to comp this final together from multiple photos of one take—keeping the label clean (visually and literally) while increasing splash amplitude.

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