A naming brief from Hell
At Purple, we do our best work with fascinating clients that have fascinating challenges. So when a brief came along that mentioned both ‘naming’ and ‘historical research’, we were all ears.
When the next few sentences said “new Dublin distillery” and the background blurb said “a wild and wayward quarter of old Dublin. A notorious place, with danger and intrigue waiting on every cobbled corner...”, we were booking the plane tickets and packing our bags faster than you can say Stilletto-in-the-Ghetto.
We love naming. It’s a chance to create something permanent, something that outlasts above-the-line headlines and fickle marketing phrases. If you get it right, even if a brand or product's design language changes over time, the name will endure.
But names can be tricky too. Words are personal. Words come with instant emotional reactions. Groups of letters that mean one thing in one language could mean something different somewhere else. Hardest of all, naming is democratised creativity - anyone can think up names and everyone, quite rightly, has a valid opinion about them too.
If you’ve ever named a son, daughter, pet dog or cat, you’ll understand the ultimate truth about naming. While at the start, you think that lots of names all seem OK, once you’ve made a decision and said it a few hundred times – you can’t believe you considered anything else.
Take Google. It was nearly called ‘BackRub’. The World Wide Web was called ‘The Mesh’, until Sir Tim decided it sounded a mess. Tinder was named ‘Matchbox’ until the research group said it lacked a ‘romantic spark’. Joseph Heller's 1961 novel was nearly called ‘Catch-18’, until the publisher decided it didn’t sound ‘catchy’ enough.
The Dublin Liberties Distillery is located on Mill Street, Dublin 8. ‘Bang-Bang’* central in an area known as The Liberties, just south of the river and Dublin Castle. Today, it’s a buzzing mix of independent shops, media firms, next-wave tech giants, creatives, students, breweries, a couple of other distilleries and a host of interesting restaurants and bars.
In medieval times, it was not the pleasant place it is today. It was noisy, dirty and malodorous. By day, there was still brewing and distilling, alongside tanning, weaving, coopers and forges.
But it was the nighttime activities of illegal gambling, illicit drinking, dodgy dealing, dens of ill-repute and cut-throats that earned the area its nickname, ‘Hell’.
*That’s another story for another time.
“We were growing our whiskey portfolio, adding an innovative range of super premium expressions to celebrate the opening of our new distillery. Our Dublin Liberties ‘Oak Devil’ and ‘Copper Alley’ products had already helped define our tone of voice and brand attitude. We needed to expand on this idea for the development of the new product innovations in a way that celebrated the liquid, communicated our brand essence, provided a platform for storytelling of the unique history of our neighbourhood, and stood out from the crowd. ”
Before we headed to Dublin, the team gave us a very exact map. The borders of the map defined our geographical area of inspiration - they were the four corners of our brief!
We kicked off with desk research in London, old map sites, the National Gallery of Ireland and reading as many books and articles on the Liberties as we could find online.
We hired the services of local Historian Reg McCabe. Meeting in the shadows of St. Patrick’s Cathedral with Avril Donnagher (who worked at the Liberties at the time), we did a mini-tour of Hell, walking the lanes, listening to Reg’s stories and pawing over the maps and notes he had prepared for us.
We quickly learnt that some more obvious stories of the area were being used already by other brands. Google “Chance your arm”, “Bang-Bang” or “Flaming Pig” and you’ll get an idea.
But when we dug a little deeper and started talking about stories that Reg, Avril, the distillery team and the creatives at Purple were all equally fascinated by, we knew we were in the right places…
“Dublin is a city full of stories and storytellers, and many of the more obvious, well-known stories have become names of brands and product brands. Others are so well told they are almost clichés. We challenged the team at Purple to dig a little deeper and find stories that were unique to us and would raise the eyebrows of not just a global audience but born-and-bred Dubliners too.”
Confusion from multiple stories, differing tellings, conflicting historical records, paper trails coming to an abrupt end, unprovable things and some unrecorded events (because they were a little shady), all caused some complexity. But everything we proposed had provenance, proof or anecdotal evidence of some sort to validate it as a Liberties story.
As well as Reg, special mention has to go to Dr Stuart Kinsella, whose thesis on the history of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, was not only a joy to read but also gave us clues to the story source, if not the source itself.
“Everything we shortlisted was rooted in a mixture of legend and historical fact. But at The Liberties Distillery, we cherish the storytelling ambiguity and creativity that are part of our Dublin heritage.”
Out of dozens of contenders we started up with, the finalists were all inspired by the stories, characters and legends of The Liberties. Each one gave us visual inspiration that could help create a pack that could do justice to the liquid itself.
‘Keeper’s Coin’ was inspired by the illegal taverns under Christ Church Cathedral, where tavern tokens and old bottles of spirit were dug up in the 1970s.
‘Murder Lane’ came at the end of a long search establishing the location of the infamous steps to Hell mentioned in so much historical writing. This gem came from an old map where one set of steps was officially called ‘Murdering Lane’.
‘King of Hell’ was inspired by Richard Parsons, the biggest Hellraiser of them all. He was the leader of the Hellfire Club, a group of Libertines and nihilists who based themselves in the Eagle Tavern on Cork Hill in the Dublin Liberties area during the 1700s.
Intrigued to know more? We recommend you get hold of a bottle and read the stories. Best enjoyed with a glass of whiskey in your hand, of course!
If you are lucky enough to visit The Dublin Liberties Distillery, we hope this blog will inspire you to look a little more closely at the neighbourhood, its history and the people that have made it what it is. And if you’ve got time, pop into a bar, or a bookshop, sit on a bus, ride in a taxi or chat to the locals. Maybe you’ll hear a new story that sparks your imagination and makes you think about the city in a totally new way.
But why stop at Dublin? We should all do that wherever we go.
Images courtesy of The Dublin Liberties and Greg Coulton, who illustrated the labels.
Thanks to Jessica Farrelly and the team at The Dublin Liberties.
And credit and kudos to Avril Donagher who worked at The Liberties at the time and was a big part of the creative development.
By Andy Harding