Alive As We Know It, The Kraken
The Kraken Black Spiced Rum: In 2010, New York, USA, Advertising Agency ‘Dead As We Know It’, devised an impressionable, integrated communication campaign for the launch of a Black Spiced Rum from the Caribbean.
The agency’s inspirational creative team brought a legendary monster and his black ink, known in Norwegian folklore as ‘The KRAKEN’, to indelible life and and globally ‘alive as we know it’ today.
This year, a decade later, my admiration for this meticulously planned campaign with its compelling graphics, painstakingly crafted brand identity, and engaging storytelling and copy, continues to burn brightly as never before, hence this celebratory, part-reprise, of a previous post.
‘The Kraken, the most fearsome of all sea monsters, lives up to 3,000 feet below the ocean surface. This dreaded behemoth has been known to attack ships, dragging god-fearing seamen to their deaths’.
‘The largest shipment of Caribbean Black Spiced Rum was reportedly brought down by the Kraken. The rum was named thusly, as to being as dark, strong and mysterious as the ink of the beast’.
What I particularly admire is the integration of holistic design. The ‘retro’ monochromatic brand identity graphics and labeling, start with the distinctive design of the container inspired by the shape of a Victorian rum bottle.
The packaging forms part and parcel of a planed communication concept of visual identity that is central to the brand construct in all integrated media.
1. The Kraken Black Spiced Rum, The Bottle, The Legend, The Rum
Advertising Agency: Dead As We Know It, New York, USA
Graphic Designer/ Creative Director Charmaine Choy, and Illustrator Steve Nobel.
2. The Kraken Black Spiced Rum, Existence
Advertising Agency: Dead As We Know It, New York, USA
Graphic Designer/ Creative Director Charmaine Choy, and Illustrator Steve Nobel.
3. The Kraken Black Spiced Rum, Chapter 1. Anatomy
Advertising Agency: Dead As We Know It, New York, USA
Graphic Designer/ Creative Director Charmaine Choy, and Illustrator Steve Nobel.
4. The Kraken Black Spiced Rum, Chapter 2. Ink
Advertising Agency: Dead As We Know It, New York, USA
Graphic Designer/ Creative Director Charmaine Choy, and Illustrator Steve Nobel.
5. The Kraken Black Spiced Rum, Chapter 3. Myth
Advertising Agency: Dead As We Know It, New York, USA
Graphic Designer/ Creative Director Charmaine Choy, and Illustrator Steve Nobel.
6. The Kraken Black Spiced Rum, Survival App
Advertising Agency: Dead As We Know It, New York, USA
Graphic Designer/ Creative Director Charmaine Choy, and Illustrator Steve Nobel.
7. The Kraken Black Spiced Rum, The Twelve Days of Krakmas
Advertising Agency: Dead As We Know It, New York, USA
Graphic Designer/ Creative Director Charmaine Choy, and Illustrator Steve Nobel.
8. The Kraken Black Spiced Rum, The Making of ‘The Kraken’
Advertising Agency: Dead As We Know It, New York, USA
Production Company: Transistor Studios, Brooklyn, New York, USA
Director: James Price