In the fast-growing US cannabis vape market, there is a rising demand for flavored options. Vault49’s challenge was to develop a positioning and branding for Fuzed, carving out a new space in the market that would re-frame flavor and quality. Our creative solution was all about dialling up the personalities of each flavor, and enabling users to create their own personalized experience.
The tone of our positioning for Fuzed – The Realest Flavors Around – is loud and proud. It cuts through the haze, boldly communicating the message that Fuzed combines the highest quality cannabis with delicious, naturally-derived flavors, adding a whole new dimension to your high.
With a brand essence that balances a fun attitude with a nod to natural quality, we developed a visual identity system that puts a contemporary spin on traditional bodega design, taking our cues from grocery store signage and fresh fruit displays.
Our bold and juicy primary colour palette is used generously across the brandworld, building on the brand’s flavor and taste credentials. And to truly differentiate the Fuzed range from other brands, we’ve gone beyond the category standard of binary sativa (up) or indica (down), and given each flavor a distinctive personality to communicate the type of high each strain provides.
To visually represent these personalities, we developed a series of bespoke illustrated icons, which are brought to life further through the punchy copy lines you’ll find on back-of-pack as well as across comms and other touchpoints.
The Mango flavor variant, for example, becomes ‘Mango Mama’. It “tastes like Sunday morning feels” and has a mellow 70s hippie-inspired visual vibe, complete with peace signs and flowers. Green Apple, meanwhile, is the ‘Bad Apple’ of the bunch. Its rebellious attitude “literally gives zero fucks” and is suitably represented by punk and tattoo-inspired iconography.
After observing how consumers personalize their vape devices, we developed our icon sets further, adding a sheet of Fuzed stickers to each pack for this purpose. Inspired by stickers found on fruit in bodegas, this addition extends the brand experience beyond packaging in an expressive way, setting Fuzed clearly apart from competitors.
Education is also playing an increasingly important role in the cannabis category. On pack, we’ve incorporated a typographic introduction to the flavor personalities and what that means for each strain’s effect. To complement this off-pack, we created a broader cheat sheet detailing how each product tastes and what you can expect to experience with each hit. Combined, these help people navigate this new brand and find the product – and flavor – that suits their individual lifestyle best, all in keeping with the overarching tone of Fuzed.
Always leading with the brand’s flavorful point of difference, and by dialing the range’s unique personality cues up and down, we have extended ‘The Realest Flavors Around’ brand concept across our visual identity and packaging designs, and into touchpoints that include social media, merchandise and point-of-sale.
Creating a new way to communicate flavor in the cannabis vape market, our holistic brand world is a contemporary take on traditional bodega design, giving these next-level products a flavor-first approach, but with a real, natural and down-to-earth vibe.
Fuzed looks, feels and speaks just as boldly and uniquely as the products taste.
