Distilled in Burleigh. Heard everywhere else.

Audience. 56.7% female, 43.3% male. 69% aged 25-44. Geographic skew: Melbourne 29.2%, Sydney 10.8%, Brisbane 3.9%, Gold Coast 1.2%. Top brand affinities: Campari 10.4%, Aperol 9.1%, Martini 8.8%, Cointreau 4.3%. The audience drinks classic spritzes and negronis as their default.

Content. Production process reels weekly. Founder storytelling around Healesville origin. Native botanical showcases. Tour and tasting flight content. Brand collabs across food and lifestyle. Bloody Shiraz Gin anchors the grape-influenced category nationally.

Voice. Mature, considered, slightly cheeky. Established Australian craft pedigree. Comfortable with own scale.

Where they win. Distillery tourism playbook. Multi-SKU range depth. Award-stack storytelling. National retail footprint.

Where they miss. Engagement collapsed at scale. Average likes down 16% cycle-on-cycle. The audience is there but not converting on posts. Geography concentrated in Victoria, with effectively zero footprint in Burly's home market.

Burly's read. Four Pillars defines the upper limit of what an Australian craft gin can become. Their audience overlaps almost exactly with Burly's target cocktail-drinker. The opportunity is to run the same playbook with sharper engagement mechanics and the geography Four Pillars cannot reach.

Audience. 71.1% female, 28.9% male. The most female-skewed audience in the category. 72% aged 25-44. Geographic skew sits in Burly's territory: Gold Coast 22.2%, Brisbane 14.1%, Sydney 6.4%, Byron Bay 2.1%. Audience interests are travel-coded at 44.6%, restaurants 51.1%, wedding 33%. Brand affinities tilt to Aperol 6.2%, Campari 6.1%, Martini 5.3%.

Content. Farm-to-bottle storytelling, sugarcane production reels, Planter's Kitchen restaurant content, tour-tourism promotion. Has tried to lean into reels and is losing the bet, with reel engagement at 0.16% versus their static at 0.38%. The format is working against their audience's preference.

Voice. Warm, hospitality-coded, farmer-meets-mixologist. Tweed Valley provenance is the anchor.

Where they win. Single-estate provenance is the strongest in the SEQ field. The on-site Planter's Kitchen restaurant is a destination. Tour infrastructure already runs daily.

Where they miss. Average likes have halved over the last cycle. The audience is sliding. Reel strategy is fundamentally broken for the audience they have, who prefer static photo content. The Tweed Valley story has been told.

Burly's read. Closest geographic competitor. Identical target audience profile, identical brand affinity overlap. Their declining engagement is Burly's opening. The reel-format failure is the lane Burly's day-to-night narrative format is mathematically positioned to win.

Audience. Sydney-skewed urban premium. Higher male skew than the gin-only category (whisky line pulls male buyers in). Indexes on cocktail enthusiasts, design audience, premium retail.

Content. Production process content, bartender features, seasonal range drops, signature cocktail tutorials. Long-form founder content. Whisky cask storytelling. Multi-spirit brand-home pieces.

Voice. Premium, considered, design-led. Tightly held brand voice across all surfaces. Confident without being loud.

Where they win. Multi-spirit credibility. Distillery-as-destination is fully built out. Whisky line gives them content depth gin-only brands cannot match. Sydney concentration is owned.

Where they miss. Limited Queensland penetration. Bar volume capped by single-venue model. Production scale is the upper limit on growth.

Burly's read. The closest reference for what Burly looks like in three years if the whisky line ships and the Burleigh distillery becomes a tour destination. Archie Rose's exact trajectory is on Burly's table.

Audience. Byron tourist + Northern NSW + Sydney lifestyle. Cross-affinity with Australian wellness, surf, native botanicals.

Content. Rainforest botanical content. Lifestyle photography. Place-led brand storytelling. Native ingredient features.

Voice. Coastal, considered, Byron-lifestyle aligned. Owns "rainforest" as a category position.

Where they win. Place narrative is dialled in. Native botanical positioning is consistent. Cross-channel with Cape Byron's wider hospitality portfolio.

Where they miss. Byron has become commoditised as a lifestyle position. Content is aesthetic but light on founder voice. Engagement-velocity tactics are not visible.

Burly's read. Same retailer footprint, eighty kilometres south. The Currumbin Creek precinct is a stronger and more uncontested place narrative than Byron right now. Burly's lane is the same shape Brookie's owns, executed with sharper engagement mechanics.

Audience. Wine-country-adjacent, juniper enthusiast, design-conscious. Skews 30+ premium cocktail drinker.

Content. Juniper-forward storytelling. Navy strength and sherry-cask experimentation. Founder content. Medal storytelling as quarterly anchor. Pink Pepper Gin packaging anchored a three-month content campaign in 2023.

Voice. Considered, juniper-evangelist, design-led.

Where they win. Award-cred is the category benchmark. Packaging design recognition gives them retail-shelf advantage. Tightly held brand voice.

Where they miss. No on-premise venue of their own. SA geography limits east-coast presence. Single-spirit category exposure.

Burly's read. Burly has more individual awards than Never Never (AGDA Silver x2, Sydney Royal x2, Adelaide Gin Festival, Dulux 2025, OpenTable 4.8) and has run zero awards-anchored content. The accolade stack is a publishable asset Burly is sitting on.

Audience. 59.7% female, 40.3% male. 72% aged 25-44. Geographic concentration is hyper-local: Gold Coast 58.9%, Brisbane 7.7%, Melbourne 3.1%, Sydney 2.2%. The audience is effectively one suburb.

Content. Multi-spirit operator. Bar-led content. Make-your-own-gin sessions. Cocktail builds. Mid-tier production quality. Posts at moderate cadence with low engagement returns.

Voice. Friendly, family-business-coded, casual.

Where they win. Longest-established Gold Coast craft distiller (founded 2018). On-site bar plus distillery plus experiences. Multi-spirit range gives them content options.

Where they miss. Engagement is functionally collapsed at 0.12%. The hyper-local audience concentration is a ceiling, not a strength. Reel performance under-performs at 3,200 plays on average. Brand voice is not memorable.

Burly's read. Direct format twin. Same model, same suburb cluster, same demographic. They have ceded the engagement lane entirely. Burly's job is to be a more contemporary, sharper, place-led version of what Granddad Jack's already validated as a viable business model.

Audience. Burleigh-local plus design-curious GC visitors. Indexes similarly to Burly Bar with slightly higher local concentration.

Content. Cellar-door cocktail content, snack and dessert offerings, intimate bar moments. Lower production value than Burly's photography.

Voice. Casual-friendly, less considered than Burly.

Where they win. Burleigh-anchored cellar door (Burly's distillery is in Burleigh but the bar is in Currumbin). Working cellar-door plus cocktail-bar format.

Where they miss. Lower design pedigree. Less press momentum. No standout brand identity moment.

Burly's read. The mirror image of Burly's format. Inside Gold Coast's October 2025 cocktail-bar round-up lists them one position apart from Burly. Better treated as a geographic complement than a head-to-head competitor: precinct-level marketing collaboration is the play, not a fight.

Audience. Burleigh local plus tourist gin enthusiast. Award-cred conscious.

Content. Cellar-door tour content. Award storytelling. Range posts. Mid-cadence output.

Voice. Considered, slightly more old-school than Burly. Award-led.

Where they win. Operates free tours at their Burleigh address. Cellar-door-first model. Award-cred.

Where they miss. Smaller social footprint. Less press resonance. No on-trade venue at Burly's scale.

Burly's read. Direct neighbour at the Burleigh production site. They hold the tour-tourism slot for the Burleigh address while Burly has ceded it. The optional fourth workstream in this proposal addresses this directly.

Audience. GC mid-market, slightly older skew, event-driven booker.

Content. Cask hall events. Sun-deck content. Multi-spirit cellar door. Event-led posts.

Voice. Casual, hospitality-coded.

Where they win. Larger physical venue. Private event capacity. Multi-spirit credibility.

Where they miss. No design-led press tier. Brand identity is functional, not memorable. Limited reach beyond GC.

Burly's read. Six-Tricks owns the event-venue category. Burly's mezzanine (30 seated, 35 standing) is a comparable private-hire asset and has zero published events content. The wedding and private-hire lane is uncontested in the design-led tier.

Audience. Smaller Burleigh-local craft enthusiast.

Content. Masterclass promotion. Botanical close-ups. Founder content. Honey-botanical narrative.

Voice. Considered, intimate, single-brand passion.

Where they win. Gin-making masterclasses give them a recurring B2C revenue line Burly does not offer. Strong AGDA presence.

Where they miss. Small social scale. Limited press. No premium retail footprint.

Burly's read. The masterclass model is the closest reference for what the optional Burleigh distillery experience would do for Burly's revenue and content.

Why this is here. Aviation Gin proves that founder personality plus craft positioning beats heritage in the modern craft-spirits market. Reynolds was the entire brand voice. Aviation went from craft brand to a $610M acquisition in under five years on the strength of personality-led content.

Burly's read. Piri Bennett is not Ryan Reynolds. Piri is a working bourbon-distiller who came home from Brooklyn's Kings County Distillery to build a gin for the Gold Coast climate. That is a more credible founder story than most Australian gin brands have. Right now it lives in press pieces and not on the @burlygin feed. Bringing Piri to camera once a fortnight changes Burly's brand profile inside three months.

Why this is here. Sipsmith proved a single recognisable visual element (the swan, the small copper pot stills) carries entire brand narrative across every surface. Brand identity loop closure is the most defensible asset a craft gin can build.

Burly's read. Burly's parallel is the green long-neck bottle paired with the polished copper still at Burly Bar. Studio Plenty designed the entire room as an extension of the bottle. The visual identity loop is complete. The job is to make the bottle and the still recurring characters in content.