Romania’s first export beer, forty years old, set out to become a pioneer again
Bucharest, May 2017
SILVA — a Transylvanian brand four decades deep, and the crown jewel of Heineken Romania’s portfolio — holds a singular claim: it was Romania’s first export beer. Heineken Romania commissioned Brandient to reposition it and design a new range of three authentic local craft-quality beers: the Romanian pale ale “Mândra Românească,” the premium lager “Blonda Desăvârșită,” and the strong dark “Neagra Legendară.”
The strategic move was to turn age into the asset. Repositioned as an authentic Romanian craft-quality beer, SILVA leaned on its own history — rooted in the past, inspired by the future — and carried it in a single line: “New beer, old love.”
The packaging traded the dogma of industrial beer for a craftsman’s treatment — Transylvanian, strong, simple and modest — and Brandient wrote the brand’s story to match:
Only the greatest love can survive, grow and evolve for 40 years — marching forward through good times and slow-downs, through failures and triumphs. That is our love — the love for beer. It has helped us throughout time to gain knowledge, and knowledge has brought us craftsmanship in brewing and perfecting great tastes. That old love is still going strong.
But the times, they are always changing, and they are ripe for the new. The moment has come for us to be the local pioneers once again — step on the stage to brew some fine craft-quality beer and proudly show everyone how it’s done.
The rich journey behind us endorses our moving forward towards a new variety of tastes: The Blonde Lager, a tribute to our history; the Romanian Pale Ale, an articulation of our innovative spirit; the Dark Lager, the already living proof of our craft-quality and love for beer.
We’re bringing that old passion into the new life, because new needs old.
New beer, old love.
Brandient is the award-winning brand strategy and design company, with offices in Bucharest and Singapore. Find out more about us and about our work.
About Brandient
Brandient is an independent brand strategy and design consultancy founded in Bucharest in 2002 by Aneta Bogdan, Cristian Kit Paul and Mihai Bogdan — never part of a global network, working directly for the owners, CEOs and boards of its clients, with an all-senior team and category exclusivity. In over two decades the firm has created or rebuilt more than 300 brands, 279 of them published as case studies at brandient.com/work — from Romania’s national leaders to brands carried worldwide. The firm has been active in Southeast Asia for more than a decade. The work has earned 84 international awards and distinctions — most recently a Red Dot (2025) and two Graphis Golds (2026) — 64 documented mentions in international design books and publications, and, in 2015, a place among the inaugural inductees of the REBRAND Hall of Fame, alongside Interbrand and MetaDesign.
About Silva
Silva is a Transylvanian beer four decades deep in Heineken Romania’s local portfolio — Romania’s first export beer. Brandient repositioned it in 2016 under the line “The beer is new, the love is old”: the Silva case.