Truly Hard Seltzer Brand Development

During my second time around at Boston Beer I worked as part of the Truly brand team wherein I was able to help across multiple departments to progress the brand. Below I have included work from the rebrand, template buildouts, packaging, text lockups, user testing, & large format projects to showcase the many hats I wore during my time there.

I spent the majority of my time on evolving and upholding the brand standards and guidelines across print, digital and social media accounts through build-outs and large format projects.

Timeline 8 months

Tools Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Box, Outlook

Role Visual Designer

Rebrand - Introduction

Truly Hard Seltzer - the good stuff.

In 2019 Truly Hard Seltzer was breaking sales records; together with White Claw, the two brands make up 85% of the total hard seltzer sales. Although this is a tremendous number, we weren’t going to stop until we surpassed our competitor and hit the number one spot.

How can we get Truly to the number one spot in the hard seltzer category?

For a brand that was up 278% from last years profits, we felt it imperative to strengthen Truly with a rebrand while not giving up ground in an unprecedentedly fast growing market. My responsibility as a visual designer was to implement a consistent visual language across all deliverables using the new brand.

Rebrand - The Problem

Inconsistencies with branding & messaging

• Lack of centralised brand control. Ownership of our branded assets was fragmented between the design team, sales representatives and external vendors with old assets still being produced and put into market. We wanted to solidify the Boston design team as the only ones to coordinate the transition of branded assets into market to further avoid inconsistencies in our signage, branding, and message.

Need to cater to a larger target audience

• White claw market takeover. We needed to pivot our initial target market of women with active lifestyles to a more positive and decidedly less “bro” market. Although White Claw has secured both the male and female 21 - 34 year old drinker, we saw huge opportunity with higher income, older, heads of household and more diverse consumers.

• Lack of external partnerships. In 2019 Truly became the Official Hard Seltzer of the Boston Bruins. This opportunity afforded us a new advertising platform as well as reaching a larger audience who may not know what hard seltzer really is.

Rebrand - Design Solution

Rebrand deliverables

The new brand identity included:

• Brand name change

• Logo refresh

• Font & flavor name rework

• Variety Pack integration

• Product image heavy POS items

• Event, Partnership & Seasonal point of sale items

Rebrand - Results

Although Truly remains closely behind White Claw, sales are expected to double in 2021

278%

Increase of sales from 2018

“But it may be Boston Beer Company who helped pave the way for the rebranding of clear malt beverages with the introduction of their Truly line of hard seltzers… when Boston Beer speaks, the public tends to listen. So much so that seltzer sales drove the company’s stock up a reported 61% last week.”

—Jeff Bernston, Up to Boston.

Template build outs & text lockups

As previously mentioned, most of my time spent at Boston Beer was rolling out the new rebrand by creating updated templates for distribution. During my time at Boston Beer we realised there was a large demand for seasonal items which triggered a need to create a unified, brand and legal approved system per season. I looked at what was being requested by sales reps and why and with that feedback built cohesive and comprehensive systems.

NHL Ad Buildout

Truly became the Official Hard Seltzer of the Boston Bruins in 2019 and as part of the partnership we created an ad buildout to distribute across the NHL channels. This buildout was by far the most complex to launch and required me to collaborate with both BBC and the NHL’s marketing, brand, and legal teams.

Halloween Buildout

The Halloween buildout was introduced as a short term, fall themed version of our baseline flavor 'Wild Berry' for our sales representatives to use in their local markets as a way to leverage our brand going into the fall holiday season.

• Poster and case easel versions (customizable & non-customizable)

• New orange ‘Truly’ callout

• Seasonal tagline

• Candy corn

• Cobs overlayed with fog in the upper 25% of the canvas

Holiday Buildout

The Holiday buildout is a is a long term, semi-permanent collection used for generic holiday opportunities in off-premise and on-premise accounts.

• Menucard, Case Easel, Poster, & Banners (customizable & non-customizable)

• New bow & tag with our parent header ‘Drink what you Truly want’

• Seasonal tagline

• Universal holiday background imagery

Text lockups

I created an InDesign library for popular lockup requests which greatly streamlined typesetting the templates and increased productivity. I added to the library as I worked so other designers and co-ops on the team could easily grab from it as well.

User testing new taglines in the marketplace

I suggested a small user testing opportunity for new tag-lines with the intention of emphasizing Truly’s huge popularity growth within the year.

Large format projects

Created for the Wonderfront Festival in San Diego, I took lead on this large format project and was the liaison between our designers, sales representatives, festival promoters, and third party printer. After having an initial kickoff meeting with the sales representative and brand team I decided creative direction, created the repeating pattern and delegated pieces of the ball-pit to different designers on the Truly team. Once each file was completed I handled the handoff to the vendor and subsequent revisions and proofing. Below is the mockup made to keep track of dimensions and which sides that needed visuals, the ball-pit mid-construction, and festival goers enjoying it!

Wonderfront Festival Ball Pit