High Brew Charts New Course With Packaging Revamp

In giving itself a packaging makeover, High Brew is aiming to go back to basics.

Launched in 2013, the Austin-based brand has been on the ready-to-drink cold brew coffee shelf since retailers first began making space for the category, primarily in the form of refrigerated products and concentrates. In 2020, that section looks a lot busier — the $6 billion shelf-stable RTD coffee category is booming with competition from brands ranging from Peet’s and La Colombe to Monster and Starbucks. With that increase, innovation has followed; High Brew’s product family now includes a variety of SKUs, including protein, extra strength, plant-based lattes and limited time offerings with brand partners such as singer Halsey.

The business is much more complex than when David Smith founded High Brew in a moment of inspiration while on a sailing trip with his family. But the brand is returning to its core elements once again to find a new visual identity aimed at organizing its growing product portfolio and standing out in an increasingly crowded coffee set.

“Our original branding was designed to educate the consumer that it was coffee inside since you could not see the liquid,” Smith wrote in an email. “The RTD cold brew category has significantly grown since we started it and consumers are now much more familiar with the canned coffee concept. It’s now time for our branding to also evolve.”

Going deeper into consumer feedback, director of marketing Miles Aghajanian said the brand conducted a survey of a group of several hundred of its most active online customers, whom highlighted High Brew’s better-for-you positioning, caffeine content and Direct Trade certification as the brand’s most important callouts. Smith’s story and the brand’s status as a large founder-owned independent company also resonated with consumers, he said, and finding a way of expressing those elements on the can in a clearer, more eye-catching fashion became paramount.

With consumers now familiar with the concept of canned shelf-stable cold brew, the opportunity arose to free up label real estate for other callouts.

“At first we were the only coffee in a can so we were differentiated in that way,” Aghajanian said. “Now we needed to look at it from the perspective of how can we stand out, what attributes are important to High Brew that separate us from the rest.”

The new design, led creatively by Austin-based design firm Make & Matter, represents High Brew as a “founder-led brand born from a sailing adventure, created to help everyone else fuel their own journey,” Smith said. Visually, the can takes some of its cues from Smith’s own journey: The top portion of the can denote the brand’s roots in Austin, Texas, while the nautical theme is expressed through ropes and map edges that are integrated into the design. Rather than using a color on top and brown for the lower portion on most cans, each package now uses a single background color for the complete label. Finally, the font in the brand’s logo has been slightly tweaked “to be a bit more energetic and less antiquated,” Aghajanian added.

In creating a cohesive visual aesthetic for its products, High Brew aims to establish a clear and consistent hierarchy that will better organize its existing SKUs and set a template for forthcoming innovation, the plans for which are already in motion: This fall, the brand will debut an “Elevated” coffee line with functional ingredients in a resealable bottle.

“As we kind of have all these things, they really need to fit and look like they belong together,” Aghajanian said. “Just making sure we have an umbrella that everything fits under that we are comfortable with.”

By the time of the Elevated line’s planned launch this fall, High Brew’s redesigned labels will be in the process of debuting across formats and SKUs. The roll out begins today with the launch of Nitro Cold Brew online and in stores in Texas by as early as next week, followed by the brand’s 40 oz. multiserve bottle. The goal is to have all High Brew products unified under the new visual identity by the start of 2021, Aghajanian said.

Despite the challenges of the pandemic, High Brew is aiming to use the redesigned branding to finish the second half of 2020 strongly. For High Brew, depressed foot traffic in certain channels and the cancellation of major music festivals, the latter being a fertile source for field marketing and promotion with millennial audiences, have been offset by strong performance in e-commerce; Aghajanian said the brand’s ecommerce sales are up 120% through June compared to the full year 2019. However, according to IRI, sales in MULO plus C-stores were down 25.7% in the 52 week period ended June 14.

“The pandemic has made everyone take a hard look in the mirror and I am excited (about) how High Brew will emerge from it,” wrote Smith. “Efficient, nimble and healthier than before.”