A good drink can be a perfect way to celebrate. And this week I'm celebrating the release
of my first book... about cocktails. So I thought it would be a good excuse to look
at the design of bottle labeling, in particular - bourbon - mostly because it's delicious,
but also because it gives us a window into the taboo and fascinating world of design
copycats. Now, when you think of knockoff designs, you
might think of handbags and DVDs. And while China certainly have a thriving industry and
taking liberties with intellectual property today, I wanted to focus on the German invasion...
of discount supermarkets. Namely Aldi and Lidl, two German giants known for their "brand-alikes".
If you're not familiar, this is the extremely cheeky practice of taking a healthy dose of
inspiration from your market leading competitor, to make your packaging as close as legally
possible to their design. Leela: Haven't I seen you in some copyrighted
movie? Glurmo *singing*: We resemble but are legally
distinct from the lollipop guild ... They don't hide this fact. In fact, they flaunt
it. Aldi's biggest UK advertising campaign had the slogan "Like brands. Only cheaper."
This is true for everything from butter to bleach to bourbon, but the first two are just
no fun to drink. Building brand awareness is something that
requires repeated exposure. That in turn actually requires two things: consistent branding,
and a lot of marketing spend over potentially decades. It's expensive to become a household
name. And once you achieve it, there's a big target on your back. Our leading brand today
will be Jim Beam, white label. Now a subsidiary of Beam Suntory, the Beam
Distillery has been around for a while. But their hooch has not always been known by this
name. In fact, while the eponymous James Beauregard "Jim" Beam was running the joint, it was known
as Old Tub Brand Bourbon. It wasn't until his son took over from him that the name was
changed. And even then it took some decades to get
to this design, the famous white label. Let's take a closer look at how this design works.
Starting along the neck of the bottle. We have an extended black capsule with what looks
like the signature of James B Beam. In fact, looking at the bottom of the label were told
explicitly: none genuine without my signature, but many signatures we see on packages are
in fact artist impressions. On liquor bottles these are often from the founder of the distillery
or the master distiller. Depending on the person in question, it might be based on their
actual handwriting or signature or invented from whole cloth. Why is this? Because people's
real signatures are usually illegible and very often ugly. It's a great brand element
because it adds a feeling of authenticity, but we don't actually want the authentic,
only the evocation. A letter artist can give that handwriting, the right character to fit
the brand. And in the case of Jim beam, it's deliberately quite legible, but suitably antique
looking. Though in reality, it only started being used in the late 1960s. We can see the
earliest versions of this label, design lack that little signature box. It's just a great
piece of marketing. The main body of the label is white, of course,
on a black background. Within the white area is a gold offset border, which we see at the
top and bottom. At the top we see another marketing boast, "The world's number one bourbon
whiskey", which JB is if we don't Jack Daniels as a bourbon. Which Jack Daniel's marketing
department expressly wish people not to do, despite it fitting all legal definitions of
bourbon. The brand name Jim beam is typeset in black, small caps with a gold foil extruded
shadow. The lettering is custom drawn, though an odd detailed: the hook on the J is actually
missing its normal serif. The lettering is curved into a rainbow arch. Below that we
see the trademark "B" wax seal graphic with a year of establishment. There's also a very
lightly tinted illustration of a small waterfall and trees behind that.
We have a three line typographic lockup here, with Kentucky Straight on top. Bourbon, largest
in the middle and Whiskey at the bottom flanked with graphic flourishes on either side.
Let's compare the original with Aldi's own Samuel Joe's. Immediately we see a few similarities.
In terms of color scheme we have the exact same palette or white label on a black background
inset with gold border. The brand name is set in a Tuscan style, a decorative type meant
to evoke the American West. Beneath that we have a red banner with gold text to match
the placement of the red and gold Beam seal. And at the bottom we have "Straight Kentucky
Bourbon" with the word order changed somewhat and no whiskey. Instead, a decorative horizontal
rule and tinted illustration of a pair of mirrored American flags behind that type.
At the bottom, we have the same script element in gold this time instead of the red signature.
But for that pop red, we have this decorative star. Some details aside from the over the
top saloon-style font betray the fact that, whoever designed this label, ain't from Kentucky.
First, the star motif they've chosen, particularly in this style, is much more associated with
Texas, the lone star state, than Kentucky. Secondly, the letters to each side, KTY and
a USA. American States are always abbreviated to two letters. Not three. Kentucky should
be KY. So Samuel Joe seems about as authentically Southern as this Swedish techno band.
[Gen-X Culturally Appropriated Caterwauling] Okay. That's the detail. But what about the
overall effect? If you were in a rush at the store looking to grab bourbon, you're probably
vaguely familiar with Jim beam's label design. Your brain would see this label and round
up. Close enough. So clearly inspired, but not a blatant copycat. Right? Well, that's
likely because this isn't the original Aldi bourbon label.
This is the original bottle and label this same bourbon came in until they changed it
in 2020. In fact, if we go to Aldi's product page for Samuel Joe's, we see this message
telling us this isn't a new product, just a rebranding. This is the missing link between
our two labels. This label is much less subtle about its influences.
Let's just go over that checklist again. Red handwritten name on bottleneck.
White label, black background, inset gold border.
Product claim in gold. Name: black with gold extruded shadow. Smallcaps
along a curved rainbow baseline. Date of establishment and decorative motif
with a red color. Product designation on three lines, Kentucky
Straight, Bourbon, then Whiskey - flanked by two decorative motifs.
Red handwritten name on a black background at base.
Looking at this label, the link between Jim beam and Aldi's design is a lot less ambiguous.
This raises one obvious question: does Clarke's Distilling Company even exists? What about
this year, 1866? We can find a few different bottle designs from different markets for
Clarke's Bourbon, including some that mentioned Lawrenceburg, Kentucky.
There are no records of a distillery by that name in Lawrenceburg, home of Wild Turkey
Distillery. But if we check for businesses registered with the state department of Kentucky,
we can see that German alcohol importer, Borco, bought the rights to trade under the name
of the defunct business Clarke's Distilling Company back in 1997.
If we check the wording on our label, it's quite clever to say "Famous since 1866" and
not *established* 1866. Borco also happen to be distributors of Evan Williams Kentucky
Bourbon. This is not direct evidence that Clarke's is made at the same distillery, but
draw what conclusions you like from that information. Also as a side note, it's kind of ironic that
a German company is trying to sell Kentucky authenticity by copycatting design from a
distillery founded by German migrants. The Beam family originally migrated to the U S
with the German surname Böhm. Today, we've only looked at Aldi, but they
are far from the only ones guilty of this practice. Of the Jim beam copycats, they're
relatively one of the better designed ones. Though, I have to say that George Washington
Bourbon made me laugh. You can tell that that one clearly was not made for the American
market. And some of the Russian labels are just plain awful. So why do companies even
do this? Well, it comes down to consumer psychology. Our brains love to conserve energy. So they
love to take shortcuts. If a design can gesture in the general direction of a brand we're
already familiar with, we're likely not only to recognize it better on the supermarket
shelf, but also to pass on some of the positive traits we might associate with that brand
over to the knockoff product. This creates a huge economic incentive for companies to
use this technique. They can leverage off the hard won brand awareness of Jim Beam's
marketing department, and automatically get some of the brand halo effect for themselves.
And clearly it must make a difference in consumer behavior or the practice would not be so widespread.
But there is a risk to this strategy. Now I'm a small Youtuber without the clout to
get a real lawyer. So this is the vastly simplified take, but intellectual property is covered
by a patchwork of different laws. Trademark is one of them and this little R next to the
Jim Beam wordmark and the seal graphic tell us that these are registered trademarks. It
would be plain stupid for a company to copy these directly. So usually people have the
sense to stay clear. But the overall color scheme and layout cannot be trademarked. It's
not specific enough to be covered by that law. But there is another tool someone could
use to sue you for being a copycat: the tort of passing off.
In a nutshell, the principle of passing off goes, someone should not sell their own goods
under the pretence that they are the goods of somebody else. United Biscuit Company won
a case against ASDA supermarkets in the UK in 1997, over them passing off ASDA's Puffin
biscuits as their Penguin biscuits. In the end, ultimately both were inferior to Tim
Tams. The truth is that these kinds of lawsuits
seem extremely rare in relation to how common the design practice has become. But back to
bourbon. Clearly Aldi were getting uncomfortable with how closely their design was looking
to Jim Beam, or perhaps they were given specific notice from Beam Suntory. In any case that
had to be a strong incentive to make up for the expense of redesigning both the bottle
and label while also making the design slightly more distinctive.
That's the design and the business. Now it's time for tasting. Ultimately this copycat
design is promising us a similar quality of booze for a lower price. Does it make good
on that promise? Jim Beam is hardly top shelf craft whiskey. It's better suited for mixing
in a cocktail or with a Coke than sipping solo, but let's see how obvious the difference
between these two is on the rocks. It smells of bourbon. Quite a strong ethanol
burn, kind of toasted grain and honey notes and the smoky... perfectly drinkable, actually,
like this. Now number 2: this might be the more mellow of the two, by just a hair. One
doesn't seem to vastly out shine the other. One seems a little bit more, kind of, light
yellow. Yeah. The slightly lighter one, is Aldi brand. But there are subtle differences,
but it's not night and day. Knowing that one is about 30% cheaper than the other. I would
not feel ripped-off having bought the knockoff. All right. Let's make a cocktail. These aren't
the class of whiskey for a great old fashioned. They're a little, a bit more blue collar.
A bourbon smash should do the trick. Similar to a Mint Julep, the state cocktail of Kentucky,
but with less fuss and less special equipment required. If you're interested in how to make
it, you'll find it along with 60 other recipes in my book: Classy as F*ck Cocktails out August
11. If nothing else, 2020 has given us three things: reasons to stay home, reasons to drink
and possibly inspiration to pick up a new skill or hobby. With this book, you can do
all three. Links in the description! A few moments later. I mean, that's just a
delicious cocktail. It's got all the elements of a whiskey sour with that hit of mint. And
once you have the sour ingredients and these things going on in the mix. It's really hard
to pick out the subtle notes of the bourbon, one from another. But we'll see, taking number
two hand how it compares. It's very, very close. If you handed me these
two cocktails, I would not be able to tell what whiskey is in which. The verdict is:
once they're in a cocktail, like a whiskey smash or whiskey sour, there's very little
to distinguish these two in terms of taste. In spite of the rip off label, I would buy
Aldi B bourbon again.
Okay. That's the end of this bourbon video. Though it's just the tip of the iceberg as
far as brand-alikes go. Just in the liquor section, Gordon's Gin and Bailey's Irish Cream
are some of the most frequently ripped off. Let me know if you'd like to see a breakdown
of either of those in the future or which grocery aisle you'd like to see put under
the microscope. The book is Classy as F*ck Cocktails. This
is the culmination of months of research and design. So I really do hope you'll check it
out, if it sounds interesting to you. If you enjoyed this video, clicking the YouTube buttons
tells the algorithm to be nice to me. And if you know someone who'd enjoy it, please
do share it. It really makes a huge difference for a small channel like mine. My name is
Linus. I've been banging on about bourbon. Thank you for your time. And I hope I'll see
you in a future video.