Scott jams with Matt Jones, co-founder and Brand Director for Four Pillars Gin, who grew from a small craft distillery to being named the world’s leading gin producer two years in a row. It’s a brilliant brand story, based on a desire to create the definitive modern Australian gin. Four Pillars is built on a mission to make something (i.e gin!) new and better, applying rich experimentation, Australia’s unique botanicals and a big dose of brand thinking, strategy and execution. They discuss what the four pillars are and mean, the evolution of the brand and its visual and physical execution, and the unique relationship they have with customers. The beautiful gin stills and their glorious names get a mention and like every great G&T, this conversation will leave you wanting for more.
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Matt Jones is one of Australia’s leading strategists and storytellers when it comes to the intersections of brand, business, leadership, experience, culture, technology, human behaviour and storytelling.
Matt has an eclectic background, combining economics, politics, brand experience and gin.
From 2001 to 2005, Matt was Chief Political Adviser to the UK Conservative Party. (the youngest person in the party’s history to hold that role).
In 2006, Matt moved from politics into brand experience, first in Sydney and then in New York City, as Jack Morton Worldwide’s first chief creative and strategy officer. Between 2006 and 2012, Matt became one of the world’s most influential thinkers in the emerging world of brand experience, helping brands like IBM, Microsoft, Qantas, Sony, Samsung and Volkswagen navigate their way in a new era of socially-connected consumers and experience-led brand building.
In 2012, Matt founded his own consultancy, focused on applying creative strategy, storytelling and experience design to brand and business challenges for corporate, craft, start-up and social businesses.
In 2013, Matt co-founded Four Pillars Gin, a craft gin business based in Healesville in the Yarra Valley. Matt takes the lead on building the Four Pillars brand and customer experience, and has helped Four Pillars Gin become one of Australia’s fastest-growing and most admired craft businesses.
Matt is obsessed with sport, food, photography, wine, film, travel, politics, fiction, architecture, technology, design, hotels, ideas, experiences, cinema, contemporary art, human behaviour, ideas and (yes) gin. He works in, speaks about, and connects the dots, between all of the above areas and is a former panellist on The Gruen Transfer.
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