How 14 Hands Winery Found Its Wild With a Full Brand Refresh
14 Hands Winery's Find Your Wild campaign is a 2021 brand relaunch platform created by agency of record Team One, inviting US consumers to embrace their spontaneous side through the lens of the untamed wild horses that once roamed eastern Washington state.
Washington state's second largest winery, 14 Hands Winery built its identity on those very horses. The brand's name references the unit of measurement used for small horses, and for its biggest marketing effort to date, the winery chose to return to that founding mythology rather than invent new territory. According to shots.net, Find Your Wild launched in the United States on May 10, 2021, supported by a television spot published on May 15, 2021, with Team One listed as the agency of record. The campaign marked a complete relaunch: new packaging across the full range of bottles and cans, a refreshed digital presence, and an associated sweepstakes, all made available in stores nationwide and online simultaneously.
The brand platform centres on a single human truth — that everyone carries both a buttoned-up, conventional self and a bolder, more instinctive side. Find Your Wild positions 14 Hands as the invitation to let that second self surface. In the United States, where lifestyle branding has become as important to wine purchase decisions as varietal or region, this kind of emotional positioning represents a deliberate departure from the category's habit of leaning on heritage, terroir, and occasion-based cues. Per clapboard.com, the campaign contains three media assets and was planned to run through summer 2021, with additional national elements scheduled to launch in fall 2021. The Clapboard Score for Find Your Wild stands at 63 out of 100.
14 Hands Winery identified the spontaneous, experience-driven consumer as its primary target. The strategic premise holds that this consumer — someone who acts on impulse, seeks connection, and resists being defined by convention — has been underserved by wine advertising that defaults to refinement, ritual, and aspiration coded as unattainability.
The competitive landscape in the United States makes this positioning meaningful. Brands such as Josh Cellars and Barefoot Wines dominate accessible price points through high-volume distribution and consistent occasion-based messaging, anchoring their identities to approachability and social ease. 14 Hands Winery, as reported by shots.net, chose a different axis: not ease, but energy. Find Your Wild asks consumers to see wine not as a civilising pleasure but as a trigger for their bolder instincts — a subtle but significant repositioning within the alcoholic drinks category. The winery is owned by Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, a Washington-based wine company described in 2021 as 14 Hands' ownership group, according to shots.net, giving the brand significant distribution infrastructure to support a national relaunch.
The US wine market context reinforces the urgency of differentiation. According to Finance Yahoo, global wine market revenue growth ran at approximately 0.5 percent annually from 2016 to 2021 by one industry estimate, reflecting a mature category where brand personality increasingly determines shelf selection over product attributes alone. In the United States specifically, the ready-to-drink and canned wine segment had been gaining ground, a trend 14 Hands had acknowledged as early as 2019 with its Grab A Wineski canned wine campaign, as documented by ispot.tv. Find Your Wild incorporated the updated can packaging into the relaunch, ensuring the brand refresh extended across every format the consumer might encounter.
The television spot sits at the centre of the Find Your Wild creative execution. Production company MJZ, based in the United States, produced the film under the direction of Steve Ayson, with Marty Williams serving as director of photography, according to shots.net and adforum.com.
Steve Ayson brought a kinetic, visually confident approach to the material. The work draws on the iconography of wild horses in motion — an inherently cinematic subject — and translates that energy into human behaviour, positioning the product as the connector between the two states. The creative team at Team One, led by chief creative officer Chris Graves and executive creative director Jason Stinsmuehlen, with creative directors Jesse Blatz and Matt Lanzdorf, constructed a brand world that is physical and sensory rather than aspirational in the conventional wine advertising sense, as documented by adforum.com. Sam Walsh served as director of content, with Julie Michael as chief executive officer of Team One, according to the same source.
The packaging redesign ran in parallel with the film creative. New labels and cans were developed to reflect the same visual language — bold, unrestrained, and departing from the muted tones and serif typography common across the wine category in the United States. Per clapboard.com, the full range of refreshed packaging reached stores nationwide in May 2021, meaning the creative system extended from the thirty-second spot to the physical shelf presence simultaneously. AdForum listed Find Your Wild among its Top 5 Alcohol Ads for May 2021, identifying the format as web film and naming Team One as the agency, according to adforum.com. The brand statement released at launch noted that Team One had captured the spirit of 14 Hands in a way that is fun, entertaining, and unexpected, a characterisation consistent with the visual energy of the finished film work.
No verified performance data for Find Your Wild is publicly available in terms of sales uplift, brand tracking shifts, or media reach figures. What the public record does confirm is the structural ambition of the effort. According to shots.net and clapboard.com, this was 14 Hands Winery's largest marketing effort to date — a claim that signals internal investment levels even in the absence of published return metrics.
AdForum's recognition of the campaign among its Top 5 Alcohol Ads for May 2021, as reported by adforum.com, provides one externally verifiable signal of industry reception. In a category where creative quality correlates with memorability and shelf influence, peer recognition of this kind carries structural weight even without audience data to accompany it.
The campaign's design logic suggests a durable strategic play. By refreshing the full packaging range alongside the campaign launch, 14 Hands Winery ensured that the Find Your Wild positioning was embedded at point of purchase in the United States as well as at point of media exposure. Campaigns that align creative messaging with physical product identity tend to produce more coherent brand impressions over time than those where advertising and packaging diverge. The decision to extend the campaign through fall 2021 with additional national elements, as noted by clapboard.com, further indicates that the winery committed to sustaining the new platform beyond a single flight. For a brand operating in a mature, low-growth US wine market, that sustained commitment to a single brand idea represents the most credible signal of confidence in the Find Your Wild platform's long-term potential.
Find Your Wild is 14 Hands Winery's 2021 brand relaunch platform, created by Team One. It launched in the United States in May 2021 as the winery's largest marketing effort to date. The campaign introduced new packaging across bottles and cans, a refreshed digital presence, and a film centred on the wild horses of eastern Washington.
Team One, based in Los Angeles, created Find Your Wild for 14 Hands Winery. Team One served as the winery's agency of record for the 2021 relaunch. The campaign was directed by Steve Ayson through production company MJZ, with Chris Graves as chief creative officer, according to shots.net and adforum.com.
Find Your Wild anchors 14 Hands Winery's identity to the wild horses that once roamed eastern Washington. The brand platform holds that consumers carry both a conventional self and a bolder instinctive side. The campaign invites people to let that second self surface, positioning 14 Hands as a lifestyle brand within the US alcoholic drinks category.
Find Your Wild launched in the United States on May 10, 2021, according to shots.net. The television spot followed on May 15, 2021. New packaging was available in stores nationwide that same month, with additional national campaign elements planned for fall 2021, as reported by clapboard.com.
AdForum listed Find Your Wild among its Top 5 Alcohol Ads for May 2021, naming Team One as the agency and 14 Hands Winery as the advertiser, according to adforum.com. No additional formal award recognitions for the Find Your Wild campaign are publicly documented beyond this industry editorial citation.
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