Animus Distillery

We've been working with Animus to help them stamp their mark on the premium craft spirits industry. Together we've defined their brand, developed new sub-brands, increased following and broadened reach.

Growing a Brand

In the past eight years, the craft spirits industry in Australia has grown from 50 distilleries to over 500. As early players in this revival, it has always been important to the Animus Distillery team to stay true to their uncompromising ethos to produce small batch, hand crafted spirits. This ethos led to us developing a tagline for their brand - Spirits with Soul.

We've worked with Animus on new product branding, product launch marketing, email marketing, social media, video content, website updates, press ads and B2B communications. We’re proud to be a part of their story.

Email marketing

With a large mailing list and strong brand loyalty, email marketing has been effective for Animus in communicating new product launches and events. With email spam being a major problem for consumers, we needed to make sure Animus EDMs had cut-through from the subject line to the sign off, clearly communicating the reason for the email and providing useful information such as recipes. It was also important that the visual design was on-brand and appealing to consumers.

Product Branding

Test Pressings

Test pressings were vinyl records with plain white labels, released to test new music in the market. Just like these labels, Animus wanted a brand that could be used to label any new product for its first release or market test. The challenge was to develop a brand that celebrated the Animus team’s shared love of music, adventure and experimentation, but that fitted seamlessly into the existing suite of Animus labels. With a nod to the old vinyl records and a neutral, sophisticated colour palette, the label was an instant hit with the team and their customers.

Hand Sanitiser

Early 2020 saw an unprecedented demand for hand sanitiser amidst the spread of COVID-19 in Australia. Animus set to producing hand sanitiser with the aim of using 50% of profits to supply to those most vulnerable in the community. We were tasked with developing a clean and simple brand separate from the existing Animus products and one that would communicate their charitable objective clearly. We used email marketing and social posts to get in front of existing Animus followers and press ads in local publications to reach the surrounding community.

The first batch sold out within hours, raising the funds needed to produce even more hand sanitiser for the community. Animus donated hand sanitiser to The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, The Living Room, Windarring, Ranges Rescue, Foodbanks, COVID-EAD, residents of the Melbourne housing towers in hard lockdown and other local charities and community groups.

Brand Style Guide

We worked with Animus Distillery to build on and strengthen their existing brand. We developed a brand style guide to give consistency to all future communications. The guide provides guidelines for logo usage, written communication and the graphic look and feel of the application of the Animus brand.