WĀ OKA MOKUPUNI™
Find Your Island
Premium Hard Tea & Lemonade Packaging Design
Cali Beverages has built a reputation for challenging beverage categories and creating products that stand apart on crowded shelves.
Following the success of VACALI Sparkling Vodka, the company set out to introduce an entirely new concept: a premium hard tea and lemonade inspired by the spirit of Hawaii and built around a simple but powerful idea:
Find Your Island.
Not a destination.
A mindset.
The Business Challenge
To penetrate the hyper-competitive Flavored Malt Beverage (FMB) market, Cali Beverages required a distinct brand entry that could immediately capture market share from entrenched incumbents. The business hurdle was twofold: first, establishing strong shelf-impact and immediate visual disruption in high-velocity convenience store and cooler environments; second, transforming an intangible emotional concept—"island escape"—into a tangible, premium asset design system that directly translates into consumer purchase intent and brand loyalty.
Strategic Leadership
I spearheaded the end-to-end creative direction, brand strategy, and commercialization pipeline for the WA OKA MOKUPUNI™ launch. To ensure a seamless market entry, my leadership focus centered on:
Brand Architecture & Scalability: Engineered a modular, color-coded visual hierarchy across the product portfolio to streamline future flavor innovations and SKU expansions.
Cross-Functional Alignment: Collaborated closely with the product formulation and marketing syndicates to ensure the visual assets perfectly mirrored the premium product positioning.
Go-To-Market Execution: Directed the creative team in producing high-fidelity sales presentations and 3D visual collateral, empowering the commercial sales division to successfully secure distribution placements before physical production began.
Category: Premium Hard Tea & Lemonade
Format: 19.2 oz Single-Serve Can
Services: Brand Strategy, Packaging Design, Illustration, Production Artwork, Sales Collateral, Visualization
Format: 19.2 oz Single-Serve Can
Services: Brand Strategy, Packaging Design, Illustration, Production Artwork, Sales Collateral, Visualization
The Strategy
We engineered a design-led go-to-market strategy rooted in high-impact visual shorthand to capture immediate consumer mindshare in fraction-of-a-second retail decision environments. Instead of relying on traditional, text-heavy copy, the brand infrastructure leverages precise sensory triggers to command the retail shelf and spark an instantaneous emotional connection.
Key strategic pillars included:
Instantaneous Visual Communication: Utilizing high-contrast, premium island lifestyle cues to establish immediate category disruption before the consumer engages with text.
Aesthetic Premiumization: Aligning native patterns and carefully curated color blocking to elevate the product above standard, budget-focused FMB competitors.
Consumer Identity Alignment: Anchoring the visual experience to an aspirational, experiential mindset—positioning the beverage as a lifestyle choice rather than a functional commodity.
The vibrant blue color palette was selected to stand apart from traditional tea and lemonade competitors while reinforcing themes of ocean water, island skies, and refreshment.
The oversized vertical typography creates strong visibility from a distance while maximizing impact in cooler doors and convenience store environments.
Supporting graphics including ocean patterns, tropical florals, turtles, surfboards, and island iconography help reinforce the brand story without overwhelming the package architecture.
The result is a package that feels premium, energetic, and unmistakably tropical.
Deliverables
• Brand Identity Development
• Packaging Design System
• Flavor Architecture
• 19.2 oz Can Design
• Sales Presentation Renderings
• Lifestyle Visualizations
• Marketing Assets and Mockups
• Packaging Design System
• Flavor Architecture
• 19.2 oz Can Design
• Sales Presentation Renderings
• Lifestyle Visualizations
• Marketing Assets and Mockups
The Result
WĀ OKA MOKUPUNI transforms a beverage into an experience.
The product invites consumers to take a break from the everyday and embrace the feeling that inspired the brand from the beginning:
Find Your Island.
