Kyrö Distillery: Branding the national treasure

Finland’s alcohol industry is almost completely state-controlled and alcohol marketing law is strict. Unsurprisingly there is no traditional distillery culture in Finland. So, we had to create one. This required some seriously fast learning – picking up a deep understanding of the global distillery industry from marketing to manufacturing – whilst already distilling and bottling the drinks.

Brand creation started at the distillery, an old dairy in Isokyrö that once had produced the most popular Finnish cheese Oltermanni. Workshops were held, photos were taken and rough sketches for the brand and its identity started to emerge. Pretty soon we picked up on the fact that even if there wasn’t much of a distillery history in Finland or Isokyrö, there was a lot of history. We decided to build the brand on the local roots, heritage and of course war stories – like all of them in Finnish history. There was a shared feeling that this unusual, but truthful mix could stand the test of time and appeal to both Finns and the non-Finns.

The relationship between Kyrö Distillery and Werklig has been hot like a sauna from the very beginning. The way of working has had very few – or no – boundaries between the client and the agency. We complete each other’s thoughts and ideas. Which is lovely. We continue to work on the Kyrö brand daily, creating arresting visual assets or devising canny strategies. The results of the beautiful collaboration speak for themselves, but for us this is really the way to create brands that breath and live authenticity, energy and emotional pull.

”We started working together in 2013. We still work together. I think that the world we have built together speaks better than myself.” Mikko Koskinen, Kyrö Distillery Company

In addition to ongoing brand work, we helped reposition Kyrö radically in 2018. To take Kyrö Distillery global, with a bang. Some bold decisions were made. Awarded and iconic bottles were replaced with new styles, and the drinks portfolio was reconfigured with a new naming system.

One key principle in our creative process is to only work with people we trust to be brilliant. Be it photography, producing packaging or localising marketing, we have always scouted for the absolute best for Kyrö. We have collaborated with Finnish photography and film agency Koski Syväri since day one, and for the Kyrö’s expansion into Germany, we teamed up with a local creative agency Lure. To make sure Kyrö’s unconventional spirit and peculiar tone-of-voice would translate perfectly.

We built the foundations – Kyrö values, purpose and tone-of-voice – together with the founders. The strategic principles lead to visual discovery and a solution for how to translate Kyrö’s ideology (= brand strategy) into a tangible form.

Near the old dairy there was a bloody battle in 1714 called the Battle of Napue. In truth a massacre by the Russian army, where 3000 Finns lost their lives. No doubt this era, also called the Big Hate (or Greater Wrath to be historically accurate), has something to do with the hardy edge of the local people. There’s a war memorial just a couple of hundred meters from the distillery. That stone memorial became a true keystone for the brand – both literally and metaphorically. All distilleries, as well as wineries and breweries, depend on the land they are located on. In the wine industry this is called “terroir”. Finding the right symbols and tools to express the local roots of Kyrö was a game of trial and error. But after months of hard work Kyrö brand was out in a form of pop-up bar in Helsinki. In April 2014 - exactly 300 years after the famous battle.

Kyrö brand is strong, simple and straightforward, yet filled with references to the local legends. Striking simplicity makes the Kyrö identity both atypical and timeless, while the layered and half-hidden meanings are its heart and soul. Longevity is crucial for a whisky business. The brand, like whisky, should get better with age.

In order to bring the “terroir” and love of the homeland into the brand, a custom typeface Napue Sans was designed. It’s based on the stone engravings of the Battle of Napue memorial made in the 1920’s. The typeface is used dominantly and excessively in all Kyrö products, including the Kyrö Distillery logo. Napue Sans stands out and is hard to copy. Quirky hand-carved stone lettering from Isokyrö require some Ostrobothnian spirit to turn into a typeface. Good luck the distillery was already distilling.

Another story for the sharp-eyed is Kyrö’s Seal of Approval. The Seal is based on Isokyrö’s coat of arms that features a bear hugging a tree. In Kyrö's version bear has been replaced with a seal hugging a bottle. In suitably medievalish style. Latin text around the emblem says 'AQUA·VITAE·FABRI·KYRÖ', loosely translated as 'Whisky Makers of Kyrö'. The letters used in the Seal are rendered from Isokyrö medieval church wall paintings. Just to demonstrate the relentless effort put into this.

The colour palette is minimalist. From packaging design to images. Besides being suitably brutal for Kyrö, such a limited colour palette is great for communicating the range of spirits. Unpolished materials, such as textured paper are paired with silver and gold foil print. Silver accent colour is for clear spirits, gold for whisky and copper for other matured spirits.

In the case of Kyrö Distillery we challenge you to find an element that hasn’t been considered and thought through. That doesn’t carry the Kyrö spirit of a Kyrö spirit.

In 2015 Kyrö Napue Gin was anointed “World’s Best Gin for a Gin & Tonic,” which propelled the brand from a tiny start-up to a company with a golden future. A note here that in a country where alcohol advertising is forbidden, the press is still allowed to write about alcohol brands if it’s considered news. So, this award really helped.

In 2015 Kyrö also won Silver award in the Dieline Awards and was shortlisted for the Cannes Lions' Design category. Kyrö visual identity won the annual best visual identity award, Kultahuippu, in Finland in 2015. To demurely mention a few.

In 2019 Kyrö was named the Brand Builder of the year by The Association of Finnish Advertisers. The association praised Kyrö for creating great partnerships and engaging with customers globally, whilst staying true to their Finnish roots.

“We started to build a brand but ended up building a small world.” Mikko Koskinen