Kin

26/03/2026

📣 WIN A DOUBLE PASS TO WINEDOGS!

🍷🐕 Love Wine? Love Dogs? Then you'll want to win this giveaway for you and friend!
Back for it's third year, with new location for 2026, Winedogs is a packed day out for you and your best mate - starting with chill times, followed by a synchronised dog walk and dog friendly festival to finish. There are lots of treats and giveaway with funds raised for SPCA!

TO WIN:
- tag a friend you want to take to winedogs
- follow and @.nz
- share for an extra entry!

We'll choose a winner this time next week! Woof! 🐶

17/03/2026

⚡️ Welcome to the team, Magenta!

We're thrilled to have Magenta join Kin as our newest Accounts Manager. After building her creative career across the UK and Australia, she's back home in the bay - and we couldn't be more excited to have her energy and experience on board.

Watch this space. Big things ahead. 🙌

12/03/2026

Every so often you get to create a campaign that feels slightly selfish… because it’s just so much fun.

Casting local “oldies” for this Bellatino’s campaign was one of the creative highlights of 2025.

Bellatino’s is a celebration of supporting local and artisanal producers from around New Zealand. A true food lover’s market. Our vision for this campaign artwork was to state the obvious, but do it with bold, personality-led creative.

You could shop at the boring beige supermarkets with their points systems and ultra-processed “food”…
Or you could rediscover the joy of eating well - secret cake stashes, beautiful ingredients, and shelves filled with carefully crafted artisan products.

Bellatino’s is about making food lovable again.

In a world increasingly filled with AI, we intentionally named the locals featured in each artwork. Real people. Real personalities. Real food lovers.

Client: Bellatino's Food Lovers Market
Art Direction & Casting: Alice McKinley
Campaign Creative: Kin
Photography + Studio Art Direction: Lee Warren

03/03/2026

26/12/2025

MEET THE TEAM ✌️

Caroline brings over 12 years of digital marketing and agency experience to the Kin team along with a genuine love for people and helping businesses grow. After a decade leading digital marketing in Wellington, she moved to Hawke’s Bay with her son Oliver and partner last year, and has been soaking up the sunshine (and top-notch wine!) ever since.

As a true marketing generalist, she blends deep platform knowledge, practical insights and a no-fluff approach that helps businesses cut through the noise and focus on what actually works. She thrives on running hands-on social media trainings, building strong client relationships and seeing clever campaigns make a real difference.

With her sharp eye and attention to detail Caroline is all about helping businesses feel confident, capable and excited about their marketing.

Caroline Arapoff

24/12/2025

MEET THE TEAM ✨

Introducing Alice McKinley

We’re proud to shine a spotlight on Alice McKinley, the visionary founder behind Kin the very first social-media & experiential-events agency in Hawke’s Bay. She started Kin nearly nine years ago, setting the scene for a new kind of creative agency in the region.

What started off as a small independent, has grown into a powerhouse - thanks to Alice’s bold ideas, flare for creating moments, and knack for building connection. Kin has scaled through viral events and by winning campaigns for a mix of clients: from global players like Omega Plus and Warner Bros, to beloved locals like Elephant Hill, and work with local-government organisations. That breadth shows just how far Kin has come under Alice’s leadership.

Alice’s vision has always been simple - to build a creative agency full of people who thrive through connection and doing what they love. That ethos aims to deliver not just work, but high-value creative work - the kind that lives beyond a brief. She believes when people do what they truly care about, the results speak for themselves.

Beyond Kin, Alice also runs a co-sharing studio space (Silo Studios), a pop-up events & cocktail-bar arm for weddings and events (Supernova Events), and has recently followed her passion for creating beautiful products even deeper - launching a contemporary gin brand, Unlikely Companions.

An entrepreneur at heart, we’re proud to have Alice leading Kin’s journey - here’s to many more years of creativity, connection, and growth under her leadership 🥂

Alice McKinley Callaghan

22/12/2025

MEET THE TEAM ✌️

Introducing Emily Pullar!

After interning with Kin for the past six months, we’re thrilled to announce that Emily will officially be joining the team as a Marketing Assistant in 2026!

Emily has already proven herself to be an incredibly valued member of the Kin crew thriving in our fast-paced environment, juggling multiple accounts, always bringing a can-do attitude and a smile to every task. Exceptionally organised, a natural planner, and a sharp content creator, she’s shown us time and again that she’s made for this industry.

We can’t wait to see what Emily achieves as she steps into her new role and continues to grow her career with us here at Kin.

Welcome (officially!) to the team, Emily 🤍✨

19/12/2025

Growing the Unlikely Companions Community 🍸💙

From a small, design-led gin brand to a thriving online community, UC has been growing smart and creative, even on a small budget.

Here’s how we did it:
Competitions & Rewards Every new sign-up got a chance to win a UC Bar Experience at Te Awanga Wine Festival and a free spot at our launch part Collaborations – Partnering with Mini Cooper and other local businesses, we offered a $10K Mini Break giveaway, collecting emails and boosting social following through Facebook and Instagram. Lifestyle Partnerships – Working with beauty and fashion brands like Nic & Cole helped us grow our Instagram organically while connecting to like-minded audiences.Targeted Ads – Small, strategic campaigns for awareness and engagement.

The result? 3,000+ Instagram followers and 5,000+ EDM database members, all built through meaningful connections and creative activations in the space of a few months.

At UC, it’s not just about the gin it’s about the moments, experiences, and community that grow alongside it.

18/12/2025

Merry Christmas from us all here at Kin!🎄
Thank you to all of our incredible clients who we have had the honour of working alongside this year. Thank you for trusting us with your brands. We're so grateful to you all and I can honestly say that we love working with each and every one of you. Wishing you all a festive season. Kin will be closed from today until we return on the 5th Jan for a much needed break from the screens.☃️🎉 Looking forward to being refreshed and ready to go, early next year!
ft our 2025 Kin Gin - epic with Grapefruit Soda 👌🏼👌🏼

17/12/2025

Events & Experiential: The Heart of Unlikely Companions ✨

Unlikely Companions has grown not just through what’s in the bottle, but through the moments created around it the gatherings, conversations, flavours, and unexpected connections that bring the brand to life.

Over the past year, we’ve poured our energy into designing experiences that let people feel the brand, not just see it.

One of our highlights:
Gin + Gastronomy at Rosewood Cape Kidnappers a premium PR launch where UC cocktails were paired across five beautifully curated courses. A multi-sensory dining experience that told our story through flavour, aroma, and design.

We followed this with our Madame Social launch, selling out with 250 guests a night that brought together our first database members and Hawke’s Bay locals in a celebration of food, cocktails, music and connection.

And we haven’t stopped.
All summer long, UC has been popping up at some of Hawke’s Bay’s favourite destinations: Te Awanga Wine Festival, Bellatino’s, Marion’s, Nic & Cole, Gin Trap, and other local hotspots. Every pop-up is a chance to talk, pour, connect and build a community around beautiful drinks and beautiful moments.

These experiences matter because UC is built on more than gin.
It’s built on beauty, curiosity, originality, and connection.

✨ Events are where our brand’s personality comes to life warm, stylish, design-obsessed, and here for a good conversation.
✨ They’re where people discover the craft behind our perfume-inspired flavours.
✨ They’re where new companions people, flavours, ideas meet in unexpected harmony.

This approach has already earned us recognition, including Gold + People’s Choice at Indulgence a testament to what happens when people can truly taste, feel, and experience the brand.

Because at the end of the day…
Connection is everything. People need to taste the brand, meet the brand, and share a moment with it.

And we can’t wait to create many more of those moments with you. 🤍✨

15/12/2025

✨Unlikely Companions by Kin ✨

Creative Director Alice McKinley
Lead Designer Sune Malot

From the beginning, the vision was clear:
design a gin that behaves more like a beauty object than a beverage.
Here’s what shaped the brand:

✨Perfume & Beauty Inspired ✨ The bottle and packaging take cues from the perfume world refined, intentional, and ritualistic. It’s something you place proudly on a dresser, not hide in a cupboard.

✨Scandinavian / Minimal Aesthetic
Clean lines, negative space, and an uncluttered layout create a calm, considered look. No busy illustrations or heavy heritage tropes just balance, clarity, and confidence.

✨Fashion-Forward & Modern
UC is designed to feel as at home in a concept fashion store as it is on a bar cart. Sharp typography, strong blocks of colour, and a contemporary silhouette reflect a brand rooted in design culture, not traditional liquor cues.

✨Obsessively Detailed
Every layer bottle, label, box, unboxing, stamps, stickers has been crafted with intention. The aim was a beautiful, gift-like moment the second someone opens it.

✨Balanced & Confident
The visual language mirrors the gin itself: harmonious, composed, quietly confident.It doesn’t shout. It simply is.

✨New Zealand, Without the ClichésProudly made here, but free of the usual native-flora-and-landscape aesthetic. Instead, its “New Zealandness” is expressed through creativity, originality, and craftsmanship.

✨Designed to Live Beautifully
Every bottle is meant to be displayed, kept, admired. A piece of design you want in your home and want to talk about.

From concept to creation, the intention was to craft not just a brand, but a beautiful experience one that feels like a small moment of bliss, every time you pour.

🍸Unlikely Companions: Where beauty meets flavour. Where opposites elevate each other.