“The information is all the same. Just the stories are different.”

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So said a bus driver who was waiting while his cargo toured one of the more than 50 distilleries along your route. 

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The drive along you winds through the lush, rolling hills of Kentucky’s horse country. It overflows with brands we know well, brands we’ve never heard of, and brands we might never see except for the brown “Attraction: This Exit” signs that mark your two-lane highways and interstates.

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To visit a handful of them is to validate the bus driver’s observation, though by day’s end (depending on the sample sizes) the stories all blend together, too. 

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In a way, you illustrate the conundrum facing any bourbon brand today: demand is abundant, but the competition, like the product, is stiff. And, like your meandering route, there’s no clear, single way to proceed. 

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Of course, contrary to our bus driver’s summation, we all know all bourbons aren’t the same, even if the contours of the process essentially are. A brand could go into detail about its mash bill. Or how it uses only the heart of the distillate, making for a better base liquid. It could lean into the aging environment, the materials, the methods. Or how a certain recipe dates to a certain year and a certain, possibly fictional person. 

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But all this is playing in the margins. In a category with hundreds of producers making thousands of brands, well, we’re already here. 

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So, what’s a bourbon brand to do to catch lightning in a bottle? 

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First and foremost, it should deepen the foundations of the brand, making an honest assessment of its proposition, and the degree to which the brand’s system and behaviors deliver it. 

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It should establish a true, relevant, resonant essence, and support it with experience principles that guide its design and language. These ingredients are as important to brand as the source of the grain in the mash bill is to the whiskey: they impart character and nuance. The journey to define them reveals things about the brand that will differentiate it, and illuminates areas of opportunity being overlooked or neglected.

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Such essential tools inform everything from package design to campaign creative; from event strategies to partner selection. They shape the approach to tentpole moments and the cadence of connection points the brand makes with consumers. 

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Above all, a well-defined foundation gives the brand a confident sense of itself. Knowing who you are is a powerful signal to the world. It creates followers, even fanatics. And it gives the people tasked with carrying the message a rallying point, depth, and the swagger to carry it well. 

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Getting to the destination—a brand that knows itself and acts accordingly—can happen quickly with the right process and partners. But not tending to these essential elements along the way results in a brand meandering along, distracted by shiny objects and reacting rather than leading.  

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There’s ample possibility for the brands along your route to discover themselves and carve out places of true distinction. It might not be easy, nor simple. But when the ingredients are refined, the stories are even better.

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Indelibly yours,

Mike, Matt, Thom and Jeff