Introducing Casa Del Rey – a new premium tequila cocktail brand that delivers the best of both worlds: an authentic full flavour cocktail experience in a convenient, ready-to-drink canned format. Casa Del Rey is more than a name, it’s an invitation. Every sip is a step into our Casa, your home away from home, where good times are always on the house. This brand is the result of a commitment to delivering a look, feel, and taste that is as real as the passion behind the product. A journey that began with a simple idea – creating a canned cocktail that delivered a genuinely premium experience, authentically crafted in good taste.
The in-house design team at Ace Beverage Group (a leading Canadian better-for-you beverage alcohol company) was given an open ended brief – to establish the story, positioning, branding, and packaging for this net-new ready-to-drink tequila cocktail brand. The beverages were being made with a focus on ingredients: 100% premium Blanco Tequila, real fruit juice, and 5g of sugar coming together to create a sessionable better-for-you experience for consumers.
The tone of the brand had to balance the premium liquid offerings with an approachable voice, blending authenticity with a modern Canadian consumer sensibility. With only these guidelines and a brand name given, the task was to approach this project from the ground up, exploring the competitive landscape, honing in on what market gap the liquid could potentially fill, determining the target demographic, and aligning the various stakeholder visions to create a unified value proposition. The final groundwork proposal included outlining the brand as a whole, building up a tone, story, and mission that aligned with and guided the designs being explored. By heading both the strategic and creative side of Casa Del Rey, the internal design team was given a unique level of project ownership, resulting in a solution that successfully met and unified both design and brand objectives.
With the strategy and design of the brand unified and owned by a singular team, both elements could truly inform and guide each other during each phase of creating and launching Casa Del Rey. Establishing a new brand in the heavily saturated Canadian ready- to-drink (RTD) category is a difficult undertaking, one that Ace Beverage Group had faced many times before. With the known final format being a three flavour mixed 6 pack, the first step was using the can design as a chance to establish and define the brand identity. The key need was to infuse a “premium” quality into a typical 355 mL aluminium RTD can, facing classic restraints related to the pricing of specialized printing finishes, operations and profitability needs, and a demand for minimal complexity due to a rapidly approaching mass production deadline.
The design also needed to pull visual inspiration from classic tequila products in order to help consumers quickly understand and associate the offering correctly, all without appropriating or inauthentically representing this Canadian founded brand. The final solution is one that feels inspired by the landscape of tequila-based beverages, while infusing the style and trends of the local alcohol industry and consumers. When creating the cocktail liquids for the brand a defining principle seemed to emerge – real, authentic, and nothing to hide – which heavily guided the can’s visual identity. Text hierarchy focused on delivery key information with excess verbiage stripped away, a bold yet stylized font aiding the delivery of a clear, legible message.
Illustration was used to evoke a feeling for consumers and link the product to the tequila landscape, but in a style that was humanistic, and easily digestible. Colour aided in differentiating flavour while allowing layout to stay consistent (again creating an information hierarchy easy for audiences to navigate). The final solution is refined through simplicity yet approachable in style, a premium sensibility added through use of a large, metallic gold sun and sleek, matte cream background all while working within the confines of format, budget, and timelines. Though the cans were used to establish Casa Del Rey’s brand identity, the 6 pack carton they were to be shelved in was arguably the most important and complex assets tasked to the team.
The design had to deliver on all elements and goals previously incorporated into the cans, with an even quicker and more info dense initial exchange with target consumers. Once again timelines were tight, room for error much greater in the mass production of complex multi-panel packs with minimal time for press approvals. The design team also knew that specialty printing techniques was something that felt necessary to explore, both to tie into the matte cans and to communicate the premium offering housed within the classic box-board container (further straining tight deadlines).
The carton itself had to follow strict packaging guidelines provided by the Canadian government, dictating necessary information to be present on each panel and often outlining specific requirements related to font, type size, contrast, and visuals. Lastly, the design had to prominently and equally push both the Casa Del Rey name (in an effort to establish this net-new brand in market) and the actual product offering of premium tequila cocktails (as the name held no connotations or weight in consumers minds). The final solution is one that prioritized this balance; showcasing can visuals, brand name, and offering information equally and on every panel.
This balance was further explored with communication being done through both written verbiage and visual imagery, showcasing stylized can renders, enticing fruits, and representative flavour colours on a cream background (the various colour weights mimicking the distribution found on the can). Deceptively simple, the pack uses subtle background illustrations and refined details in order to capture consumer attention, relay the premium offering, and communicate effectively at quick glance no matter how the product is shelved. To further this attention to detail, specialized printing techniques of embossing and spot gloss were applied to various visual elements, including gold suns, product renders, prominent logos, and key call outs. This encourages the pack to be tactically explored by consumers, communicating the premium offering and encouraging intrigue in an effort to overcome that initial purchase hurdle.
Both the can and pack design prioritize a balance between refined, enticing visuals and fast, easy consumer comprehension, a crucial guiding principle when entering the heavily saturated Canadian RTD market. Ace Beverage Group and the internal design team knew the visual identity of the brand and resulting consumer response would be a major factor in dictating the success or failure of the product (one that had lofty first year target sales goals provided by the government sanctioned liquor retail boards).
Despite tight deadlines and external pressures, the initial and final design concepts went through rigorous consumer and shelf testing, with countless design iterations explored, mocked-up, and analyzed. Feedback was cultivated in numerous ways, varying from word of mouth conversations to detailed in-person and digital interviews and surveys. Hundreds of feedback points were recorded and compiled, and then used to justify or direct the design and strategy decisions being made (as mass production was the only feasible way to launch, leaving no room for reprints or adjustments). This not only comforted the multiple stakeholders involved in the project, but also cultivated a design solution that was proven to be both visually and strategically successful in meeting all necessary objectives. Throughout this process the designers stepped into multiple roles, acting as strategists, marketers, researchers, consumer testers, copywriters, and everything in between in order to justify their designs, give solidity to the visual choices, and align a multitude of opinions into a singular voice.
The final design solution for Casa Del Rey is one Ace Beverage Group feels proud to share, and proud to launch. Working within tight guidelines from external parties while given complete creative freedom from internal teams provided a unique set of hurdles, but more importantly a unique opportunity. Three designers, all in their mid-twenties, had a chance to play a key role launching a new ready-to-drink tequila cocktail in a very competitive and strictly regulated alcohol market. Working simultaneously on strategy, value proposition, purpose, and visual identity resulted in a package design rooted in real-world feasibility and application, striking a balance between aesthetics and functionality with no room for misinterpretation. The strong, tested brand base has laid a foundation for success and future brand expansion, and has already garnered support and positive reactions far beyond previously attempted product launches. Casa Del Rey is the result of a network of in-house teams coming together behind a singular idea, collaborating and creating around a product they all had a hand in building. The design is an homage to this experience, a refined yet effective real-world visual solution that communicates our authentic commitment and passion to the Casa Del Rey brand – an idea, product, and execution truly crafted in good taste.
