France
Paris
The first project run by our office in Mexico couldn’t be more emblematic – the creation of a fresh visual identity system for Olmeca Altos Tequila. In order to create a new global expression of the brand which is sold more than 51 countries – Mexico, United States and the UK being the lead markets – we pulled together a dedicated team of creative experts from our CBA LatAm + CBA London offices, a partnership that combines local cultural expertise and global systems vision.
Olmeca Altos Tequila is a super-premium brand that honours the quality and tradition of true Mexican Tequila – from the planting and harvesting of the agave to the distillation and ageing process – the brand is full of features that evoke Mexico’s cultural heritage.
Our challenge was to rethink Olmeca Altos’ visual identity system to reflect the brand’s essence, highlighting its authenticity and showcasing the energy and vitality of contemporary Mexico in a fresh, engaging and iconic way.
To create Olmeca Altos Tequila’s new identity, we used CBA’s Brand Senses methodology – which explores the expression of the brand through all five senses – to establish the brand principles and create the foundations to develop a flexible design system able to provide versatility and rhythm to different communication occasions.
We celebrated the iconic Olmeca Altos bottle as the core element of the brand’s new visual universe, symbolising the quality and authenticity of the spirits creation, as well as the human and artisanal touch. The characteristic shape of Olmeca Altos’ hammered bottle becomes the brand signature, distinguishing it from the other tequilas.
To support the iconic bottle, we built an identity system to convey the complete brand story. To demonstrate the brand’s contrasts and vivacity, we used the iconic blue as our base but built in additional tonal colours to create diversity and pace. We redefined the typography and photographic style with fresh expressions of modern Mexico; and through our authentic and sustainable materials palette we suggested on-trade and and off-trade environments that allowed our consumers to feel the Olmeca Altos experience.
In total the new design system for Olmeca Altos Tequila showcases not only the tradition of the Mexican culture but also its contemporary sophistication.
Through our final toolkit we have armed Olmeca Altos with all the necessary tools to communicate consistently and with a celebratory attitude. The outcome is a dynamic brand experience, richly representing the many authentic facets of Mexico.
In one more partnership job of CBA B+G + Heineken, the gigantic Dutch company asked us to redesign Devassa brand mark, with the challenging task of keeping its authentic approach and its original, vibrant, and creative Brazilian spirit.
Over the years, the positioning and communication of the brand – created by entrepreneurs from Rio de Janeiro in 2002 – has gone through different moments. Its recent repositioning relies on the quality of its pure malt recipe with a key differentiator – the tropical flavor, tailored to the Brazilian taste and climate. Perceiving these pillars as Devassa’s strategic differentials, we set out to the challenging job of rebranding.
We deep dived into the brand’s strategic information and documents, tracking its history since market launch, to understand how the brand’s moves have helped to create today’s perception of value. Devassa is tropical – this is its greatest equity. It is a beer tailored to the Brazilian taste and climate. But how to turn ‘tropical’ elements into the ‘tropical of Devassa’?
Giving new meaning to ‘tropical’. Cruising contemporary Brazilian borders with the movements, and creative & transformative spirit of the brand and, based on that, develop a new graphic representation and visual identity for Devassa brand mark.
In the tropical of Devassa, the cultural expression and a creative & transformative attitude become the basis for the new identity, making room for an iconic representation of the brand’s DNA – the further-reaching tropical energy is represented by the circular element emerging from the letter ‘D’, symbol of the brand mark. This is the new graphic representation of the unique flavor of the Tropical Pure Malt beer.
Based on the new assets, we set out for the labels, the portfolio rearrangement and, eventually, the communication key-elements. With the new look & feel ready, we developed the new brand guidelines to orchestrate each and every brand touchpoint.
We developed the visual concept of Devassa Tropicaê, a beer flavored with tropical lemon and passion fruit flavors. The taste of beer with all the tropical fruit. Born in an innovation workshop led by us, the new product contains natural fruit juice and is available in the Northeast region of Brazil.
A branding and design work that strengthens Devassa’s new positioning, evolving and highlighting its original attributes, yet enhancing a new context of values and cultural representations.
This project won the Nielsen Design Impact Awards 2019, a global award that highlights cases of packaging redesign, assessing them as marketing tools. Prestígio’s packaging redesign stood out for increasing the brand’s sales by 46% after the new packaging reached the POS. In 2018, it was also awarded for ABRE Brazilian Packaging Award and Grandes Cases de Embalagem.
Prestígio is natural coconut, Prestígio is Brazil.
Created in 1961, and up to now a synonym for homemade recipes with coconut and chocolate, Prestígio is a genuine Brazilian chocolate deservedly recognized as one of Brazil’s symbolic brands.
Attentive to consumers’ tendencies and desire for more and more natural products, the Swiss multinational, as a leader in products which join nutrition, health and wellness, decided to renew the Prestígio brand. The preservation of its ‘natural coconut origin’ essence was established as the main goal, and CBA B+G was invited to the challenge of reconnecting the brand with its Brazilian chocolovers.
Despite being a traditional brand, preserving its memory is important.
So we started off from the brand’s archeology, in a way to rescue its codes and original shapes and visuals, the fundamental elements for settling down Prestígio’s essence and positioning. In order to grasp the real meaning behind the visual codes and reconnect them with its target audience, we carried out dense exploratory researches, both quantitative and qualitative, always checking the brand’s preliminary concepts and triggers. The research oriented a creative process that gathered strategy, research and design staff.
Hundreds of consumers from several Brazilian states were considered in a deep semiotic study with lots of learnings. We also carried out the Brand Senses methodology, which explores the brand’s five senses and orients the guiding principles that would shape the creative path to reconnecting with its identity: fresh air, nature sounds, the perfect combination of natural coconut and chocolate flavors.
The outcome from the strategy and design works was the translation of all we heard from Prestígio consumers. Its iconic elements – the red color, the textures and the coconut were kept on, although represented in a more natural and authentic way. The sign typography, also recalling a more natural and truthful feeling. On the packaging, wooden boards, slivered ingredients, details in green – nature showing off closer to reality. The boxes were finished with embossment and textures to reinforce the brand’s sensorial aspect. An authentic simplicity to the exact Prestígio extent.
Commonly used in Mexican and North American markets, Coffee Mate is a coffee whitener, available in liquid or powdered form, which gives coffee a creamy rich flavor. Aiming to offer its key customers different consumption choices and win yet more consumers, Nestlé Mexico asked CBA B+G to develop new premium products for the brand, to seduce the taste buds of its faithful adorers.
In transition from youth to adulthood, the millennials are demanding consumers, who are connected to novelties. As they are starting to develop the habit of drinking coffee, they look for options to reduce its bitter and acid taste. Along with our analysis to understand the category, the target consumer and their habits, Nestlé’s internal data appointed vanilla as a much-appreciated taste by the target, for being authentic and provoking different sensations.
The next step was to map creative territories and, from them, find visual concepts that would translate the innovation inherent to the product – enhancing texture and flavor to an ancient, traditional drink such as coffee.
Among the creative concepts developed, the vanilla blossom turning to cream was the one chosen, a perfect metaphor of the mixture of flavor and creaminess offered by the product. The visual identity was created based on this concept and was applied to the 4 new flavors of the liquid version of Coffee Mate, all special variations of vanilla – the target consumer’s preferred flavor.
An explosion of pleasure and taste, but with the exact amount of daily indulgence searched by the young adult consumers of the brand.
