Byron Sharp Says Distinctive Assets Reign Over Brand Story: “Who Cares, It Doesn’t Matter”

In an overly competitive space such as spirits, it’s hard for a new brand to make its mark. Papa Salt, a gin created by five friends, including Charlie Maas and Margot Robbie, is currently on that journey. 

Charlie started the creative journey for Papa Salt by looking at other brands within the category. “Tito’s vodka, it’s very different. When people try to find it, it was very easy to find because it stood out from the others in the category,” he said. 

“We weren’t going to go out and make the Tito’s of gin, we had to do something different.” 

Charlie said he wanted to create a luxury gin that “you weren’t afraid to throw around on the beach with friends.”

The Ehrenberg Bass Institute’s professor Byron Sharp commended Charlie on the brand’s name, which is the most important thing. “You don’t want connotations of something you don’t want, it doesn’t really matter what the brand is,” he said, while noting that the designers in the audience were sure to be horrified. 

“No one says to themselves, ‘Hey, how come the biggest selling American diner burger joint in the world has a Scottish name?’” he explained. Byron explained people use brand names as ‘heuristics’, or a mental shortcut to associate the offerings of the brand with the name itself.  

Byron added that for the Papa Salt logo to be recognisable, the bottle itself has to be shown on shelves and in advertising for a number of years.  

He used the example of Johnny Walker. “What is one of the most prominent distinctive assets for Johnny Walker? ‘Man walking’ is pretty high, but actually it's the squareness of the bottle,” he said. 

Byron said distinctive brand assets are there for the brand “to look like you,” emphasising the importance of choosing something, committing to those assets, and working to make them distinctive to the customer over the “legacy story of the brand.”

“At the end of the day, who cares, it doesn’t matter,” he said.