Congrats on the launch of Lofted Custom Spirits. This is a big moment—for both of us.
We first met when The Indelible was a fledgling firm and Lofted Custom Spirits was hardly a gleam in your ownership’s eye. Once the seed was planted, though, we knew it had to gestate quickly.
There was uncomfortable laughter when we shared a four-month timeline to position, name, create an identity, develop a brand expression system and create foundational content for a new-to-the-world brand.
“We need to launch a website with the name in four weeks,” you said when we spoke on Christmas Eve. To borrow from Kentucky’s national pastime, we just got out of the gate and needed to be coming down the stretch.
No small task, but one we’d seen many times before. In our experience, it’s not us, but often the clients who can’t keep pace. To your credit, you did. You were efficient in process, clear with feedback and decisive—typically making calls before the review sessions ended. (We might humbly suggest that the quality of the work product made swift decisions easy.)
We often say that what matters more than whether we (or others) like the work is whether it delivers on the strategic objectives. So let’s evaluate the output (though we also do happen to like the work).
A clear, descriptive name: Lofted Custom Spirits, while not as playful (or hard to pronounce) as some of the other candidates, nails it.
A visual expression that’s distinct, conveys a boundary-pushing mindset and expresses a collaborative approach? Yes, yes, and yes.
Avoid looking like everyone else: while we’re in the bourbon world, we’re not constrained by it—and definitely don’t want to look like everyone else the category.
This is where the imagery strategy really delivered. It’s a communication system on its own: a trifecta that taps into the imaginative spirit of your customers, centers the collaborative partnership of your approach, and underlines it all with the power of your process.
As for the brand’s voice, Lofted Custom Spirits needed to balance sophistication with accessibility. So you’ll find nothing superfluous, to use a word the brand wouldn’t, yet nothing so plain as to diminish the quality of the product.
Of course, we hit these marks together by establishing strong foundations: a resonant purpose; shared aspirations with your audience; value that is indisputable; and an essence that inspires. These components of the new brand’s strategy, complemented by its character, will set a new bar for contract distilling. (Not to mention the world’s most advanced distilling operation and a team to match!)
As you help your customers launch a thousand brands, we look forward to cheering them on, knowing that each will be a unique distillation of a vision only Lofted Custom Spirits could help them achieve. Who knows, maybe we’ll even drop by and pick out a barrel or two for ourselves to bring The Indelible Bourbon brand to the world.
Cheers!
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