It’s been a while since I mentioned anything about branding but I found something that peeked my interested and I wanted to share with my fellow Southern Dandies.

Southern Comfort has been a go-to drink from the affluent to the seedy in this region of the United States since its inception in New Orleans in 1874 and the design firm Cue was charged with giving the esteemed brand a once over. What you see above are most the liquors new design elements which unlike before, actually give some reference to its New Orleans roots. For instance, the crescent moon is used because New Orleans is known as the home of the Super Bowl XLIV champion New Orleans Saints Crescent City and the little rolling-pin-looking-thing looks like the New Orleans Saints logo a fleur-de-lis. I like the new look although there is something to be said about the comfort I felt with the bottle’s previous design which felt more down home than this new look does. This newer image is clean and shiny but those aren’t adjectives I’d use to describe the feelings and mental image this brand evoked when I hear it’s name.

It’s almost as if they have made a definitive stance on NOT being known as a drink to have at a bar while watching the game but rather something to be sipped over discussions of the latest Wall Street Journal report and stored in a fancy liquor cabinet. I understand that this is not the emotion they were shooting for but it is what I see nonetheless. Southern Comfort has a very high brand awareness already and even though I’m not 100% behind the changes I can see how the new bottles will be able to stand out from the other bottles that will surround it on a shelf. So I guess my dislike for the new look doesn’t actually stem from any poor execution on Cue’s part but simply my fondness of the old SC design and look. I held SC’s label in high regard, similar to that of Jack Daniels, and thought of it as untouchable. This new SC seems to have lost its every man/down South look and instead replaced it with something that looks good on a billboard.

Or is that just me?

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