Creative Director • Senior Art Director • Brand Designer
MaielloCello
MaielloCello came to me as a new Italian Lemon Honey Liqueur entering a category with no established playbook, inspired by the centuries-old tradition of limoncello and reimagined through Georgia craftsmanship and Southern hospitality. The brand needed a complete visual identity that could hold two traditions at once, genuine Italian heritage and Southern warmth, credible enough for hospitality buyers and approachable enough for a backyard gathering.
My team built MaielloCello's brand and go-to-market strategy from the ground up, developing a positioning, voice, and visual identity rooted in an unlikely friendship: an Italian nonna and a Southern debutante becoming pen pals. The result is a brand that feels crafted and hospitable, ready to introduce a new category to restaurants, retailers, and home bars alike.
Agency
Campfire Branding
Team
Creative Director/ Designer: Jenna Shoop
Strategist: Mattie Rushing Costner
Year
2026
Brand & Go-to-Market Strategy
MaielloCello's strategy was built to introduce a category that didn't exist yet: an Italian Lemon Honey Liqueur with no direct competitor on the shelf. My team developed the brand's positioning, voice, and go-to-market roadmap around three core ideas, Salute, Y'all; Salute, Honey; and Salute, A Gracious Plenty, translating Italian tradition and Georgia hospitality into a strategy built to earn trust with distributors, restaurants, and retailers before a single bottle shipped.
The result is a phased rollout built for a new-to-market spirit brand: a distribution strategy to get MaielloCello onto shelves, a restaurant and bar strategy to build credibility with hospitality tastemakers, a retail strategy to convert awareness into sales, and a consumer awareness push to bring it all together, giving MaielloCello a clear, sequenced path from launch to lasting shelf presence.
Brand Identity
Imagine an Italian Nonna and a Southern debutante
becoming pen pals, decades of it, swapping family
recipes, handwritten letters, and stories around the
table.
Maiello Cello is what came from that friendship.
I developed MaielloCello's complete visual identity, from label and logo to the toolkit behind it, translating an Italian tradition reimagined through Georgia craftsmanship into a system built for hospitality. Georgia lemons, Georgia wildflower honey and a whole-lemon production method all needed to read at a glance, alongside genuine Italian heritage and Southern warmth, across everything from the bottle to sell sheets and staff training materials.
