Globally, the travel retail market is highly competitive with an overload of choice. And it's no different for beverage brands competing for space within this industry. Whiskeys from all over the world are readily available, offered at special prices or as "travel exclusive" gift-with-purchase bundles, in order to stand out and win market share.

The challenge Jack Daniel’s was facing was that they wanted to sell a non-traditional, American product to Chinese consumers during their New Year celebrations; a special time where tradition and gifting is integral to the festivities. To facilitate this, two very opposite concepts needed to marry in a culturally respectful way to create added value for the product, arouse nostalgic emotions around family and gifting, and tell the story of Chinese New Year in a fresh, exciting way.

The Jack Daniel’s bottle has a unique and iconic shape. Drawing inspiration from the bottle's square body, we crafted our visual language around a Chinese-inspired pattern, melding East with West. With this same square shape, we created a medallion as a vehicle to stamp the year and corresponding zodiac animal symbol, which could be updated annually to reflect the animal for each ensuing year.

The overarching package design was inspired by Chinese lanterns; ubiquitous symbols synonymous with the New Year festivities that can be found as decorations hanging in their hundreds along neighbourhood streets and in peoples' homes. We transformed the Chinese-inspired square pattern into a diecut for the aluminum tin packaging, resulting in a unique Chinese New Year lantern that could actually be used.

Convincing our client to direct more of the budget into production as we saw an opportunity to create a gift pack with a dual function as a real, working lantern.