The Context
Hinch Distillery is located in the grounds of the beautiful Killaney Estate, Ballynahinch County Down, and has been producing award-winning craft Irish whiskey and gin since 2019.
Belfast Photo Festival is is one of Northern Ireland's leading visual arts festivals, showcasing the finest national and international contemporary photography.
Hinch Distillery is a new business producing whiskey and gin from a facility near Ballynahinch. The organisation had a desire to target audiences within the arts and creative tech sector, and sought out a fitting partnership to help make this happen...
The Solution
The distillery entered the drinks industry with a bang in 2019, and have already won awards globally for their products. To target the niche market they desired, the company partnered with Belfast Photo Festival to promote Hinch Distillery’s Whiskey and Gin. Just like CAPCON, Hinch are recognised for doing things a little bit differently, making them perfect partners with a shared belief in the importance of investing time in craftsmanship, the pursuit of perfection, artistry and refining their offerings.
With Arts & Business NI’s matched funding, the drinks manufacturer will showcase their offerings at Belfast Photo Festival’s CAPCON, an international conference on film, gaming, animation & immersive technologies.
This unique platform will help reinforce their brand, while at the same time providing refreshment for conference guests, adding to the overall positive experience and memories that both partners wish to have associated with their brands. Hinch will develop bespoke drinks which will reflect the conference theme of creativity and technology, providing them with the perfect platform to reach their target customer demographic of creatives and edgy young professionals.
The partners will host the first Virtual Reality Bar in Northern Ireland, specifically geared to appeal to their shared consumer base of cool eclectics and creative consumers. Photographic and film content will be captured during the VR Bar experience, for use across a variety of online and offline promotional platforms.
The project includes a VIP launch event which will showcase Hinch’s products to their current and potential clients, as well as to CAPCON’s followers and visitors, amongst whom are some of the world’s leading creative tech innovators and companies (e.g. Disney, Facebook and Pixar). Integral to the project will be a bespoke bar with projected visuals that will accentuate Hinch’s brand image and ethos. This innovative event and immersive experience will promote Hinch as a supporter of creative craftsmanship, mirroring their crafting of the finest liquor.
The new forged partnership with Belfast Photo Festival will enable Hinch Distillery to cement their brand identity, and help build brand awareness amongst their target aspirational consumers. It also allows Hinch Distillery to commercially differentiate themselves in a busy marketplace, through association with arts and culture, promoting the firm in a creative, innovative way, adding to the company’s competitive edge.
“The exciting partnership with Belfast Photo Festival, centred around the Hinch VR Bar at the international CAPCON event, will allow Hinch Distillery to commercially differentiate ourselves through an arts and culture association. It will reinforce positioning of the company as an ambitious & independent Whiskey and Gin brand in Ireland and beyond, through association with world leading creative practitioners including Disney, Pixar and Lucasfilm. Being associated with such a unique experience will assist us to reach and expand our target consumer demographic of young professionals, creatives and cool eclectics. It provides a novel, on-trend vehicle to showcase our full range of products in a carefully curated and complimentary setting, generating valuable content for our social media platforms whilst enabling us to communicate the mythical stories associated with our products, particularly our Ninth Wave Gin.”
Michael Morris, International Sales Director, Hinch Distillery
“CAPCON, presented by Belfast Photo Festival, is a new creative industries conference, originally trialled in 2018. Collaborating with Hinch Distillery, a newcomer to the international gin and whiskey market enables us to build our brands together. Just like CAPCON, Hinch are recognised for doing things a little bit differently, believing in the importance of investing time in craftsmanship, artistry and refining our offerings, which is why we are perfect partners. We are proud to host the first Virtual Reality Bar in Northern Ireland- attracting new audiences to CAPCON will, in turn, increase the future sustainability of our event. Partnering with Hinch Distillery, who are already making waves in the whiskey and gin markets globally, will increase our profile and allow us to invest in young emerging talent through encouraging networking and experimentation with new technologies. We are really excited about our new partnership with Hinch Distillery and the potential for development of further collaborations in to the future.”
Michael Weir, Belfast Photo Festival
