Beauty in authenticity: the nuances in designing new and heritage brands

Fabio Molinaro and Roberto Decio, creative director and strategic planner at Milanese branding studio Robilant, delineate how to develop a brand story for a new-to-market brand versus a heritage brand and explain the role of beauty in the design process.

Italian design has always had an unparalleled ability to make beauty approachable, whether it's the sophisticated and refined imagery of heritage brands or products created from scratch to catch the eye of discerning consumers. Since we’ve grown up with beauty as part of our culture, we don’t see it as aspirational or distant and our expertise lies in making beauty feel democratic while giving Italian flair an international value.

Being able to unearth the most authentic and beautiful brand stories in a sensitive way is a kind of chemistry. However, the real challenge comes in deciding how to convey those stories through symbols, names and meaningful ‘imaginaries’ endowed with a great aesthetic synthesis.

With heritage brands, you really need to understand their DNA, as well as their position against competitors, in order to make them relevant to contemporary consumers. Most importantly, though, is getting to the truth of the brand and communicating its story in a genuine way.

The same can be done with new-to-market brands, the difference being that the ‘truth’ is often found in the product and its provenance. This is where we look first when trying to build the most impactful, relevant and engaging story around that product.

While these approaches are different, they are both based on truth and authenticity.

The issue with some heritage brands is that they tell a really interesting story in a boring, obvious or old fashioned way. We always try to find the most peculiar aspect of a brand and narrate an engaging and contemporary story through design.

If you can consistently make a story relevant, credible and interesting, it makes a real difference in the long run by enhancing brand capability across all touchpoints.

For Italian winery Zenato, we focused on the poetic narration of a family legacy, illustrating the winery's deep connection to the Italian countryside, which was clear when we visited Zenato’s family-run vineyards. The idea was translated into a suite of watercolour imagery that takes consumers on a visual journey across the Zenato territories.

One thing that heritage brands must avoid is relying too much on nostalgia. A brand needs to have depth the same way a person does, so communicating that a brand is X years old isn’t enough in today’s competitive market. 

When 160-year-old Italian brand Campari came to us wanting to reclaim its Milanese origins, we transformed the identity with a griffe, much like Italian fashion griffes that are desired across the world. Davide Campari Milano now sits alongside Prada Milano or Moschino Milano in the consumer consciousness.

Not only this, the most important landmark in Milan was sculpted into the bottle shape because it's part of their brand story. From the moment we first saw it reflected in the glass of their historic and iconic bar at the entrance of Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II downtown Milan, we knew it would be part of the design.

Both Zenato and Campari exemplify how older brands can make their heritage feel fresh and relevant. But how can new brands convey that same level of credibility when they have no history behind them?

The solution often involves creating a strong memorable character based on true facts, as we did with pinot grigio Flora Lisa, which launched in the US earlier this year. For this, we had to consider how people see Italy from the other side of the ocean, leveraging stereotypes that are most relevant to Americans.

This exercise resulted in a brand inspired by a typical Italian garden of Renaissance origin, embellished with sculptures of Mediterranean deities, and a woman-muse statue rhyming with Mona Lisa as the central character.

While there might be more freedom when designing a new brand, it actually comes with more responsibility as you contribute to the success of the product in its appearance on scene. This was particularly true for Diageo’s new blue aperitivo Venturo.

For the identity, we started with the colour of the liquid which evokes the unique nuances of the beautiful southern Italian coasts. Then, we took inspiration from the classic Italian villas, specifically the entrances, yet refurbished with a modern touch, thus epitomising how Venturo is a new iteration of something rooted in heritage.

But mostly, we worked on the finesse of the detailed illustrations of rosemary, Sicilian lemons and sea salt, and the chamomile flower Venturo is made of, revealing the rich sensations one might experience while testing it.

The name is the perfect summary of this invented brand story, as Venturo means the next to come in Italian and also evokes other words, such as “vento”, which means wind in Italian.

In short, Robilant’s “cultural conduit” approach – though slightly different when applied on new versus heritage brands and products – relies on finding a sense of beauty and truth and being able to convey it with an innate sensitivity, making it available for the most diverse audiences.