Brief
In the moments after Canada legalized recreational cannabis, more
than 100 brands were instantly born to capitalize on the market opportunity. Two
years later, the saturation continues, with hundreds of brands now competing
for attention. Most of them were created as cash grabs, with little interest in
the products and no prior cannabis experience.
Flowr is different. The brand traces its heritage decades before legalization, to a time when logos and branding were impossible, and reputation was the only marketing. In those illegal days, Flowr honed its craft and perfected its process in the shadows.
When it came time, post legalization, to step into the light, they approached us.
Flowr tasked us to build a stand-out brand capturing the
credibility of its “underground” heritage and appealing to the modern
recreational user, all while staying in line with highly restrictive government
regulation – such as using just a single color.
Challenge: Build a cannabis brand that rises out of the weeds.
Idea
Heritage doesn’t need stoner tropes or dated design styles.
The competition was fighting to claim credibility with weed clichés and faux-craft art styles. But you can’t fake authenticity. So we owned our past and anchored the brand in Flowr’s history: established 19xx. It blends heritage design cues with modern sensibilities to become a look that young professionals are proud to keep on their coffee tables next to bottles of high-end spirits.
We chose a powerful brand color: the cobalt blue of vintage apothecary glass. It stood out and stands above, a marker of expertise, quality and distinction. The brand mark is a new perspective on the name’s “F”, spun isometrically to tell its story: stairs rising from the underground, stairs for products that elevate you. It’s a look that cuts through just as well in flat applications as it does in motion in digital ones. Bold type, heritage tone and strong usage complete the brand – a nod to proud history that’s not stuck in nostalgia.
Relevancy
Too many brands see cannabis users as one-dimensional stoners and pander to them. But the consumer base sees through that. They’re skeptical of marketing and look for authenticity – and, in the new Flowr brand, they found it.
Flowr is a company created by and for cannabis users, and the new
brand acknowledges cannabis culture without pretending it’s the only aspect of
audiences’ personalities. Flowr understands that cannabis and users are complex
and multi-dimensional, and the new brand communicates that.
Visually, both in store and online, the design cuts through, while being meeting
the government’s stringent regulations (no small feat). Audiences love the
brand, which is evident by the staggering interest they have in also buying
Flowr’s non-cannabis products, like accessories/apparel.
The new family of products looks and feels at home in the living rooms of the target audience - a far cry from the unsightly stoner-trope packages of other brands that get hidden away in drawers.
Learnings
Our early design explorations were just that: our explorations. It was design that excited us personally. Thankfully, we chose to run extensive consumer research. The findings reminded us of one of the fundamental truths of our business – we are rarely the audience of our work.
The research showed that customers, even in the premium category,
weren’t as compelled by our early experimental directions as we were. It
indicated that they believed over-designed brands were hiding the poor quality
of their products behind nice design. So we stepped back and approached the
work quite differently: creating a premium feel that didn’t alienate skeptical
consumers.
We are often critical of the way consumer research is planned and executed –
using consumer preference to select final design. But this project has reaffirmed
the value that carefully planned research can provide. It gave valuable data to
guide our design decisions, without jeopardizing the quality of the final
output.