BACHUÉ RUM

CRAFTING A PEOPLE- AND PLANET-POSITIVE COLOMBIAN RUM BRAND

Even in a creative agency like ours, it’s rare to have the opportunity to help conceive and launch an entirely new brand.

We’re delighted to be finally able to share our work on Bachué Rum – a project that allowed us to flex our creative strategy and design skills on an exciting premium rum brand, working from core concept through to naming, packaging design and brand world development.

Creative Branding | Brand Launch | Packaging Design | Brand World Creation | Social Media & Photography

The Challenge

Create a rich and authentic expression of contemporary Colombia

We were approached to lead on creative expression by our good friend Stephanie Jordan, the powerhouse co-founder behind Avallen Calvados which we helped to design and launch back in 2019. Her business partner, Pierre Martin Neuhaus (owner of Domaine du Coquerel Calvados), was to handle liquid development, bottling and much more.

The new brand was inspired by a growing appetite for premium rums and a blossoming love for Colombia within popular culture. Half-Colombian herself, Steph wanted to share an authentic taste of Colombian life and culture beyond the cartel headlines and cartoonish representations that have dominated the country’s image in the past.

Hoping to make a splash, the ambition was to create a brand with a touch of feminine energy that celebrated the lesser-known Colombian style of rum. Importantly, it was to have a driving purpose at its core: dedication to supporting the people and the land where the rum originates through a fully transparent, sustainable production process and support of the environmental campaign 1% for the Planet.

Where we came in

Steph already had in mind the core concept, inspiration, brand purpose and launch market – France – but needed our help to bring the brand to life.

THE INSIGHT

Finding a voice within the rum category

Our first step was to examine category and consumer trends to inform our creative strategy.

Rum brands tend to fall into two camps: those such as Bacardi, Havana and Mount Gay focused on their actual origins and production processes, and brands like Kraken, Captain Morgan and Don Papa that wrap themselves in an invented mythology.

This left a gap for a brand that could combine reality with spirituality, sharing real stories through Colombian voices to demonstrate a powerful connection with the culture and the natural world.

This marriage felt like a perfect fit for today’s more culturally curious consumers who restlessly seek the new and to have a positive impact in the process.

THE APPROACH

Expressing the life force of Colombia in packaging design and beyond

With this positioning in mind, from the outset we designed the brand to be flexible and dynamic: it needed to have strong foundations for future brand activations, with the ability to act as a conduit for the creative stories of Colombia.

The luxuriously detailed packed design shares the brand’s story, while other tales can be illustrated in a vibrant brand world behind the bottle.

These strands are unified with a name embracing the deity of Bachué, a mother goddess of the Muisca people responsible for protecting and preserving cultural and environmental wisdom.

Bottle design

We complemented a simple bottle silhouette with a richly layered label that depicts luscious flora and fauna in traditional art styles. The label heroes the key brand icons of the goddess Bachué and a fertility frog that protect the vital energy and creative spark of Colombia. It is richly illustrated in purple tones inspired by the colour of Colombia’s sugar cane, accented with gold which holds a special place in the creation story of the Muisca.

The elements are brought together in an ownable core label architecture that has been designed to adapt and evolve across future range extensions or limited-edition artist collaborations.

Last but not least, every bottle is embellished with a decorative neck collar produced by female artisans in local communities using traditional fique weaving techniques. This collaboration ensures that every bottle purchased helps sustain this traditional craft and the people preserving it.