Now owned by Heineken, Eichhof has been brewing beer in the Swiss city of Lucerne for over 185 years, and still has strong links with its home region.

Heineken tasked Pearlfisher with evolving the Eichhof brand and its 13 different varieties for a global market. “Eichhof is legendary in the Central Switzerland region but its current aesthetic was inconsistent and there was little distinction across the portfolio and on shelf,” says the agency’s head of strategy, Kristoffer Fink Parup.

“We wanted to reinforce the sense of community, locality and brewing tradition that makes Eichhof so special and take this out to the wider world with a modern creative idea that allows people to taste and experience all that Eichhof has to offer.”

Centred around a new brand positioning, Neue Traditionen, the most noticeable difference is a more modern version of the distinctive Eichhof squirrel, which dates back to the 1960s.

“By recreating the wordmark to match the styling of the squirrel and creating a distinctively repetitive squirrel pattern across the Eichhof can, we are opening up this aspect of the narrative to potential new audiences,” says Parup.

While the company’s yellow brand colour has been retained, Pearlfisher worked with Lucerne-based artist Amadeus Waltenspühl to redesign the packaging across its range of beers.

Waltenspühl’s black and white illustrations are accompanied by hits of colour, while the redesigned labels nod to Eichhof’s heritage with details of the beer’s founder and the date it was originally founded.

pearlfisher.com