Provenance is not a novel idea in liquor advertising. Where it's from and how it's made will only take you so far. Well-trodden ground is still well-trodden, even when every word of it is true.
For more than a decade, my job was to protect an icon without using provenance as an excuse to be boring. To build a team that cared about the small stuff, kept things honest, and made sure the brand always felt completely unaware of its own place in pop culture.
Since the late '60s, the black label had been claimed by the likes of Johnny, Lemmy and Keith as a pirate flag — a symbol of rebellion and a certain magnificent insubordination. Unlike so many brands that trip over themselves chasing the audiences who adopt them, Jack understood something rare: that its place in culture was never manufactured. It was simply earned. By being exactly what it said it was.
Whisky makers from Tennessee. And on a wall at the distillery in Lynchburg, in letters big enough to mean it: Every day we make it, we make it the best we can.
That's not a campaign. That's a character. And character, it turns out, is the hardest thing in the world to fake — and the easiest thing in the world to accidentally ruin.
My job was to make sure we never did.
OUR TOWN
There would be no Lynchburg without its people. And without the people of Lynchburg, TN, there would be no Jack Daniel’s. It’s that simple.
Jack for POTUS
In one of the most hotly contested presidential races in our short history as a nation and in the grand American election-campaign tradition of woodblock poster printing, we took our own candidate to the convention cities in 2008 and into Rolling Stone and The Onion for good measure.
Postcards from Lynchburg
This was the final series Arnold created for this particular Jack Daniel’s campaign, and one I’m especially proud of. At the time, it was the longest-running campaign in advertising history — a body of work that began in the late 1950s and never really behaved like advertising. Instead of borrowing the usual symbols of status, success, and good taste, it told non-fiction short stories about the people, place, and peculiarities of Lynchburg, Tennessee.
It was an analog tradition in the best sense: quiet, crafted, human, and built to last. Helping uphold that voice, rather than modernize it into something it was never meant to be, remains one of the great privileges of my career.
Gentleman
Jack
It's the same Jack Daniel's- just a little smoother and better dressed.
The Barrel Hunt
150 years of the Jack Daniel’s distillery. 150 Jack Daniel’s barrels hidden in 150 cities around the world. Follow the clues, find a barrel—keep the barrel and whatever’s inside.
Social Actvation
In the weeks leading up to the anniversary, clues and short promotional videos were released across Jack’s global social media channels.
On-premise promotions
A global collaboration of bars that served Jack Daniel’s helped spread the word about the Barrel Hunt, and each bar was provided with a set of posters made from genuine Jack Daniel’s barrel wood.
Tennessee Honey
Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey has been made the same way since 1866 — that's the story Jack Daniel's likes to tell. So when the brand changed things up and created Tennessee Honey, its first flavored whiskey, we created a new story.
And every story has a back story, This 4-part on-line video series teased the launch.
Label Stories
The famous Jack Daniel’s Black Label is one of the most recognized pieces of design in the world. What most people do not realize is that nearly every element on it has its own story.
The challenge was that no single channel could tell all of them properly. Animation let us bring the bottle and its details to life, using different elements of the label to frame each story. Long-copy ads gave us room to tell the shorter tales hiding in plain sight. And the web experience let people go as deep as they wanted — exploring the label, customizing and buying their own wearables in the “whiskey couture” design store, and testing their label knowledge by competing for top-time honors in the Label Scramble game.
It was part brand history, part design excavation, and part very elaborate excuse to stare at a whiskey label longer than most people would consider reasonable.
