While working at MDC Advertising, I developed concepts for the Mexican liquor brand, Los Amantes. Los Amantes, a mezcal liquor, is a deeply mystical spirit that is rumored to have psychedelic qualities. The below ideas build off of these themes.
CONCEPTS
The Bottle is Your Gateway into an Alternate Universe
Through the bottle/ the liquor’s strong spiritual powers, you will be transported into another world. The world is within the bottle. In order to experience this other world, one must get inside the bottle (which would represent someone drinking the alcohol). These worlds can represent unknown or undiscovered territories such as:
• the bottom of the ocean
• the desert
• jungle of agave plants (not necessarily unexplored but still could be seen as an unknown to a common person)
• outer space
Or maybe the places could be spiritual spots that are more serene (to achieve that connection between the drink and mysticism) like a beach, river, mountainside, or a sunset. Something just really beautiful.
Design Strategy/More details:
• Have someone diving into the bottle where you can see the world inside of it
• Have the bottle split open with the world exposed. Have someone standing in front of it and just parting the bottle with his/her mystic powers (a’la Moses with the red sea)
• Have a person hanging onto the cap trying to open it while the contents of the world are seeping out
Swirl/Mirage
When you look through any bottle, a swirling effect is created through the distortion of the surface. When you drink Mezcal, things could take on this same swirling effect. You begin to see things differently. It can be an illusion or almost a mirage. The bottle can be used to create this swirl effect if used as a viewfinder, and the surface can be used to reflect two different scenes. The swirl and the mirage could be combined. The mirage is an illusion, not necessarily real, but not necessarily unreal. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as an inspiration.
Design Strategy/more details:
Creating the mirage could be used using reflective surfaces:
• mirrors
• ocean
• glass
• the bottle itself
Bottle Spill Transformation
People drink Mezcal for an altered state. They want to change their current state of being and trade it in for a new altered one. This idea will be illustrated through seeing the Mezcal itself changing something. The bottle will be spilling out the liquor, and as it hits the surface it will transform something once dull into something bright. The Mezcal will almost be like a major fairy dust. The Mezcal will let you “see the light” in life.
Everything is the Opposite of Reality
Things become other things. Since Mezcal is unlike any other liquor, your experience when you drink it should be like no other experience you have ever had. Related to the “alternate” reality idea, this concept is more detailed in what that reality would look like, except this the “alternate” reality lives within our current reality. Using Castanada’s “nonordinary reality, which indicates that this realm was indeed a reality, but radically different from the ordinary reality experienced by human beings who are well engaged in everyday activities as part of their social conditioning (Wikipedia).” This nonordinary reality is a perception, and you can successfully reach this world by drinking Mezcal. It is about going against ingrained social institutions and just exploring a new world.
Design Strategy/more details:
• walk on the ceiling instead of the floor
• cars on sidewalk- people on the street
• just basically living in a fantasy world within the current world
Another way to implement this idea is through an exaggeration of reality. The best exaggerations are commonly used hyperboles. Instead of just saying “I’m so cold I could freeze,” what you said would come true.
True Spirit
You will find your true spirit through drinking Mezcal. Since you haven’t drunk Mezcal yet, you don’t know what your true spirit is. Your true spirit could be anything besides who and what you are right now. To play up the otherworldly experience that you have when you drink Mezcal your true spirit can be non-human.
Examples of non-human spirits would be:
• an animal
• a place
• a color
Can also be related to childhood dreams:
• superhero
• firefighter
Weird/ “Hangover”
The Hangover was all about randomness. Like how did a tiger get in the bathroom? Or where did this baby come from? Mezcal is different and perhaps has almost psychedelic side effect. So the Los Amantes "Hangover" would be out of place Mexican imagery in New York.
Design Strategy/more details:
• guy riding home on a burro on fifth avenue
• wearing a sombrero in an office meeting
• anything that is distinctly Mexican inserted into everyday urban life
Psychic/ Communicate with Another World/ Carlos Castanada
Mezcal is almost a magical potion that allows the drinker to communicate with another world. Carlos Castanada, a self-proclaimed Shaman (person who communicates with the spiritual world) would drink this drink. Instead of featuring Castanada as a person who has the ability to link people between this world and another one, a more common symbol for this practice would be a psychic. A psychic is a person who professes an ability to perceive information hidden from the normal senses through extrasensory perception (ESP). Other such individuals with similar abilities are:
• fortune teller with crystal ball
• tarot card reading
• astrologer
• palm reading
• psychic
• hypnotizer
Design Strategy/more details:
• Show these individuals, but maybe show them drinking the Mezcal
• Instead of using the crystal ball, show the psychic with a bottle of the Los Amantes
The Process of How the Drink is Made
There is a myth that a lightning bolt struck an agave plant, cooking and opening it, releasing its juice. The campaign can focus on an interpretation of this myth. The process of making the mezcal is important because it is authentic and gives the drink its special smoky flavor. Instead of using a lightning bolt, a dragon could be used. The dragon could blow fire out of its mouth onto the plant. By using a dragon, it can be a nod to the liquor’s mythical past.Dragons are associated with magic, supernatural powers, and representative of the primal forces of nature.
Upwards
Since the drink is somewhat of a stimulant, one way to illustrate this idea is using the bottle to bring someone upwards.
For example, the bottle itself can substitute a:
• parachute
• elevator
• airplane
• bird
• rocket ship
• basically anything that goes up