Bless your Temptations with Porto dos Santos.

At Brand Reveal, we believe that great brands do not hesitate to worship what they love and understand everyone’s secret wishes. Read here how we “aligned the planets” with Megustafor a new port wine brand, with a familiar name – Porto Dos Santos –  but a feisty attitude to be disruptive…

When Alexandre Botelho (a real Douro child from Celeirós) called us, his brief was clear: “I want to create a port wine which will be different. It will be called Porto Dos Santos”. This at first seemed a steep hill to climb given the endless amount of historical brands in a category with little innovation (there, I said it) and on top of that, with a very common portuguese family name. To crack this riddle, we dived into the brand available elements. This is what we discovered :

1. The product : a dryer style which reveals a world of unsuspected hidden aromas. Port is a fortified wine, i.e. the grapes fermentation is stopped with the addition of a brandy, leaving residual sugar and that sweetness port wines are famous for. With Porto Dos Santos, the fermentation lasts longer and reduces the sugar up to a half of what is often found. This results in a dryer style which unmasks a plethora other aromas that would otherwise be hidden by sugar and opens a world of pleasurable aromas.
2. The story : all hail the ancestor… who blew it all ! The Dos Santos were a typical “Portuense” family, driven by moral and entrepreneurial values. Created in the early 1800’s, Porto Dos Santos enjoyed success in Brazil and Portugal. But not all family business are destined to last for generations…  In the 1930’s, the company went bankrupt as it was forced to sell its assets to reimburse the debts caused by the “Tio Armando” uncontrolled lust for “women and gambling”. This blunder was the opportunity to shift the emphasis from the founder – often revered and admired – onto to the person who succumbed to his passions. Certainly, not an heroic achievement, but so human after all…
3. The name : Dos Santos, i.e. a human who gets closer to divinity. The “Santos” idea – (Saint in Portuguese) is about the journey from a person who lived as a human, but rose above the rest to answer to a divine call, leading by example and sacrifice. Thus, the “Dos Santos” name contains this duality between the human and the divine calls, a real opportunity to celebrate this tension.

Based on these pillars, we defined the brand as following :

1. The Brand promise : Porto dos Santos blesses your temptations. In a world full of rules, we want to enjoy ourselves without guilt. And so, Porto dos Santos is on our human side and understands our temptations in indulgent occasions, with a wealth of flavours revealed by a dryer style. Note that this is not about sins.
2. The brand architecture : one temptation for each product group. To bring to life the world of temptations, what better way than expressing them for each of the 3 product groups that compose the brand ? (If you saw a parallel to a “trinity”, the world of symbols have no secrets for you!). The temptations are formulated as following :

a) White Port Wines are light and gold. These colours can be associated with the glitz and riches, or and express the temptation of possession of material things like gold, money, diamonds… The labels of the white range shows a faun covered in jewelry and enjoying his gambling.

b) Ruby Port Wines are crimson and red, and symbolize the carnal lust and desire… The labels of the ruby range show another faun, right out of an happy orgy, peeping at an innocent celestial creature.

c) Tawny Port Wines are orange, brown and intense, therefore they express the pleasures of the mouth and gluttony. This time, a chubby faun stands proudly over a hip of food and decadent gourmets…

The claim : Heaven Can Wait : For each of the product groups, a celestial creature overseas the scene of temptation, surrounded by symbols of order, balance and harmony, thus underlining there is always a possibility to rise towards a holier life. And so, Porto Dos Santos gloriously claims “Heaven Can Wait”, as an invitation to enjoy the good things in life before rising up…

A promising good start : Porto Dos Santos is being currently rolled out in Denmark, Holland, Germany, France, Belgium, Luxemburg and Portugal and has already packed very enthusiastic reactions from wine lovers and trade. Proof that there is always space to innovate with fresh ideas provided there is inquisitiveness, a genuine out of the box approach to established rules and the sensitivity to listen to ones needs and wants.