Top 11 animal icons in the drinks world
One of the most important DBAs (Distinctive Brand Assets) for any brand is their icon. Probably more than any other asset, like colour or shape, an icon has the power to convey extra layers of meaning – when done right, it can evoke and project a deeper sense of the brand’s personality, purpose and values.
Animal or bird-based icons can be particularly successful – they are memorable, universal, approachable, intriguing and can often be incredibly disruptive when used boldly within a wider brand world.
We’ve listed out our top 11 favourite animal brand icons; the ones we think are the most successful, memorable and iconic within the beer and spirit categories.
The red grouse is Scotland’s national game bird, and the icon has been a fixture on their whisky bottles for well over a century. The blend was first created in 1896 by Matthew Gloag, but the icon didn’t appear until about 1905, first painted by his daughter Philippa. It was redrawn by wildlife artist Rodger MacPhail in 2010. It is a powerful device and has been used in a ruthlessly consistent way for generations – the icon (known as Gilbert) appears on most brand touchpoints.
This radical Scottish brewer uses a modern, stylized dog in a shield to represent the name of the brand. Drawn like a graffiti tag, it captures the brand’s punk, anti-establishment spirit and it’s been caught in the act of howling to the sky (presumably at the traditional beers and brewers!) It’s a simple, disruptive, memorable icon, confined in a distressed shield that seems to be jeering at more traditional age-old heritage beers. It’s modern but has bags of personality.
The bison icon represents the brand’s name (Zubr means bison in Polish) and provenance. The bison grass vodka was born in a distillery near the Bialowieza Forest in NE Poland in 1928. Now a world heritage site, it is the last remaining primeval forest in Europe, home to the last wild herd of roaming bison in the world. The bison grass is the bison’s favourite food, so it seems only appropriate the animal is honoured as the key DBA. A bison painting adorns the label, with a silhouette on other branding comms. The bison also represents strength, rarity and majesty.
The world’s most awarded single malt has been around since 1887 but their famous stag emblem has only been used since 1968. It represents their name, Glenfiddich means Valley of the Deer in Gaelic, and was based on the “Monarch of the Glen”, a Victorian oil painting by Sir Edwin Landseer. Full disclosure, we redrew the Glenfiddich stag in 2017 – to give it 12 tines, or pointers, on its antlers, showing its maturity, power and status as head of the herd. We’re still immensely proud to see our icon used on all bottles and communications today, and believe it is a strong example of a brand DBA.
The story goes that Doña Amalia, wife of founder Don Facundo Bacardi, spotted a colony of fruit bats nesting in the family’s original Cuban distillery one day. She took them as a sign of good luck and insisted they be the symbol of the company, becoming the emblem in 1890. The bat has been used in a ruthlessly consistent way (it’s only evolved slightly) ever since – representing the company’s resilience, determination and persistence. It is said that bats actively improve the distillery’s ability to create rum too, by pollinating sugar cane and eating bugs that threaten the crop. Nice rationale!
Does a centaur count as an animal? This ancient Greek symbol of half man, half horse has been used by Rémy Martin since 1870. The founder chose the symbol of Chiron, who is known as a friend of man and the wisest of all centaurs. Not only has the icon been used consistently for over 150 years but it’s also imbued the brand with a huge depth of meaning, one rich in mythology and astrology. One of the unexpected modern commercial benefits is they’ve become a huge success in the Far East, primarily for their icon, where the cognac is known as ‘man-headed horse’ not by its actual brand name!
Kozel is the world’s favourite Czech beer. It’s still brewed in a small Czech village, just outside Prague, and the icon represents their name (kozel is a male goat in Czech). The beauty of having a goat icon is the huge personality it brings – they are such inquisitive and playful animals – which is why the brand doesn’t take itself too seriously. The animal is so important to them, they keep a brewery goat onsite (and employ a full-time goat handler!). Disclaimer: we also created this icon, redrawing it in 2019 for a more modern audience (the previous one was a bit too old-fashioned and overly detailed).
This might be a bit of a cheat, as the toucan icon has not been used by Guinness since 1982. But we include it because it was such a playful, abstract and intriguing icon – and one that has proved endlessly enduring. First used in 1935, it instantly captured people’s imaginations even though the brand associations are non-existent! It was dreamt up because the Guinness family thought showing people actually drinking beer in their ads was vulgar, so the ‘zoo’ series was born, of which the toucan proved the most popular.
Invented in 1934, this German herbal liqueur famously made from a recipe that includes 56 secret fruits, roots, herbs and spices. The brand’s icon is a 12-pointed stag – which unusually has a glowing cross between its antlers. The deer symbol is easy to explain – the name Jägermeister literally means ‘Master Hunter’ in German. The cross? It’s from a legend in which a stag appeared to a hunter and converted him to Christianity – who later became the patron saint of all hunters. The icon hasn’t changed since the 30s (sometimes simplified for comms) and is now associated less with religion and more with nature and wilderness.
This French uber luxury vodka brand was invented by Sidney Frank (spirits legend) in 1996. He called it Grey Goose because he’d once sold a wine by that name back in the 70s. The icon started out as an illustration but morphed into a more iconic silhouette shape of a goose in flight – allowing it to be used in more creative and disruptive ways and channels. It is pure, simple and elegant – everything the vodka is too!
Eristoff is a Georgian-inspired triple distilled vodka (that’s actually made in France… shhh!). The logo is of a wolf howling at a crescent moon, which is said to represent the Persian name for Georgia, Gorjestan, meaning ‘land of the wolf’. Of course, the wolf is a powerful icon with lots of inherent significance – the brand claims it represents their wildness, fearlessness and independence but of course it’s all bound up with connotations of strength, night and alpha predators too!
If you want to discover more about branding and Distinctive Brand Assets (DBAs), we’ve got another blog you can read.