case study

Axe and the Oak

A world-class distillery with deep familial connection.

Axe and the Oak is a world-class distillery with deep familial connection. The leadership and staff enjoy rich relationships in which they experience the freedom to create second-to-none craft spirits. As they are poised for continued stellar growth, Axe and the Oak recognized the need to codify their feelings of family, so that their internal culture could be exported to new places and new faces.

We worked with Axe and the Oak through our Brand Culture process, in which we developed rich, authentic understanding of the story, motivations, and future of the brand. Through an extensive series of questions, attentive listening, and Empathy Mapping, we gave Axe and the Oak time and space to search to the nadir of their beginnings, bringing to the surface the wealth of their drives to make whiskey for making friends.

We organized and systematized the soul of Axe and the Oak into four Brand Culture statements: Purpose, Vision, Values, and Positioning, incorporated photography from their library and ours, and presented the outcome in a beautiful Brand Culture book for their use in inculcating their culture in new tasting rooms with new staff across the country.

The outcome for Axe and the Oak is a new and deeper sense of self-understanding; they now know with certainty who they are and how they can tell their story for new people in new markets.

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