Johnnie Walker Gold Label Reserve

Creative Agency: Butterfly Cannon
Project Type: Produced
Location: United Kingdom
Client: Diageo
Packaging Contents: Whisky
Packaging Substrate / Material: Tin
Product launch location: Global

Also known as the ‘Festival Of Lights’, Diwali is the largest Indian festival and is celebrated all over the globe with food, singing, dancing, flowers, lights and fireworks. The Johnnie Walker team asked Butterfly Cannon to create a giftable and culturally relevant Limited Edition and Travel Exclusive design for their Gold Label Reserve blend, to engage with the thousands of Indian who travel each year to celebrate Diwali with their friends and family.

Kicking off the project, we knew we needed to respect the history and traditions of this much-loved festival whilst also creating a design that was a thoroughly modern interpretation of Diwali and Indian visual cues, in order to disrupt and differentiate on the crowded shelves of Global Travel Retail environments.

Our solution was a contemporary twist on traditional Rangoli artwork – intricate patterns made from coloured rice, sand or flower petals, that are an integral part of the Diwali Festival. Re-interpreted in a crisp, graphic style with a mixture of traditional and contemporary symbology embedded within them, the patterns were then sliced and reassembled as stylised rays of light.

For added sensorial effect, and as a nod to the textural nature of the raw materials used to create the original Rangoli patterns, the intricate designs were embossed onto the tin, with key parts of the otherwise gold design executed in vibrant pops of yellow, orange and purple in keeping with the brilliant colours that can be seen everywhere during Diwali festivities.

The end result is a Limited Edition that feels upbeat and giftable; reflecting how Diwali is perceived in modern-day India, whilst also bringing the unexpected playful twist to celebratory occasions that is at the heart of the Johnnie Walker Gold Label Reserve experience.

The design codes established in the packaging have since been used across a wider Johnnie Walker Gold Label Reserve Diwali campaign, with Butterfly Cannon creating further visual assets to bring this to life.

“We were delighted to partner with Butterfly Cannon on this limited edition offering that perfectly captures both the warm spirit of Diwali and the celebratory ethos at the heart of Johnnie Walker Gold Label Reserve, in a fresh and contemporary way.” – Gaurav Adlakha, Brand Marketing, Johnnie Walker Global Travel