Quevedo Wines is a young Port & Wine company founded in 1993 in São João da Pesqueira. As it approaches the 30 years old mark, the team felt it was ripe to further express its friendly ethos and build its personal path. This required a positioning definition with an implementation on a very (very!) large range of more than 15 Port wines. Read here how Brand Reveal worked with the Quevedo team and the Think Bold Studio and Saver Glass to create a rich, warm and colourful range.
- POSITIONNING
Behind this technical word lies a simple idea : “positioning” is simply what a brand wants to stand for, in the mind of its audience and relative to its competition. A good positioning must be emotionally engaging, connected to the brand product truths and its team way of life.
Quevedo Ports are about Celebrating Friendship. This statement does reflect Oscar and Claudia Quevedo who are notoriously known for being direct, soft spoken and very amicable.
This statement is powerful as “celebrates” implies an idea of active energy and “friendship” is a value often sought in the occasions of this soft and sweet wine, but seldom expressed as Port design tend to be dark and severe!
2. PLANNING
Many Port wine brands have very long ranges. With more than 15 variants (excluding Vintages and Single Harvest editions), Quevedo is no exception. So we created a system that expresses the Port types and multiple price levels by grouping variants by consumption occasions, i.e. Easy Aperitifs, Special Moments and Landmark Moments.
A colour intensity and finish was defined for each of these groups (e.g. Easy Aperitifs = bright and lively tones), and we also defined colour families for each Port type (e.g. blue & turquoise for white port, red & crimson for ruby ports and warm browns for tawnies).
3. DESIGNING
A special bottle was designed with a shape we all liked and many hidden details were included, like the São João da Pesqueira provenance where all Quevedo Ports are produced AND matured. To complete this system, the same bottle shape was produced in two tints by Saver Glass to present and protect the different port styles as they should.
The creative approach was bold as it ditched the incumbent range look which was dark and recessive, i.e. in contradiction with the positioning idea. If Quevedo is about celebrating friendship, then it should be the most colourful Port. Because there nothing that prevents us from doing it: it feels good and will catch the attention of those who are curious and open about easy going ports.
However, every design element on the bottle has its justification. For instance, the diagonal layout is taken from very early Quevedo Tawny bottles, the bottle lettering is inspired from ancient Douro wine bottles, the very organic “Q” symbol echoes Quevedo’s sustainable agriculture. The labels are “single faced”, i.e. they wrap around the bottle with a softly textured paper with a lovely touch feel. And because friends share secrets, we also included friendship proverbs and the “Quevedo butterfly”, an original sweet symbol of the brand.
4. SOME LEARNING
In our experience, best positionings are developed TOGETHER WITH those who breathe and live their brand. It requires deep conversations, challenges, benchmarking and fine tuning. As this work touches the very essence of a business, it needs to be conducted with care and a great strong sense of listening. Quevedo open mind and genuine interest was a real gift in this project and made the work very enjoyable !
Also, we cannot stress enough the importance of the planning stage of a range before starting any creative work, especially when product ranges are very long. A good planning will help guide developments and unlock efficiencies, instead of reinventing everything. Here, a structured mind and ideas for efficiency are key.
Last, in this project, the team used the Positioning not only as a strategic guide, i.e. a way to check the relevance of ideas to the strategy, but also as a creative inspiration, i.e. defining a territory to explore through design, in this case “friendship”. Last but not least, and even if not mentioned, “quality feel” was also our on-going mantra because we wanted every Quevedo bottle to deserve every penny paid…