DTC beverages adopt preppy branding - AdAge.com

The resurgence of preppy style on TikTok and runways is trickling into consumer packaged goods.

Soon after pleated skirts, crisp oxford shirts, blazers and loafers returned to runways and Fifth Avenue store windows, TikTok was flooded with videos about “dupes” for “old money” or “quiet luxury” garments, closely following the “coastal grandmother” trend that included videos of how those on Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket dress, eat and live.

Now, direct-to-consumer beverages are embracing the preppy style both in their packaging and in other elements of branding.

Scroll through the Instagram posts of companies such as low-ABV beer Chestnut Sports Club or alcoholic seltzer Clubby and you’ll find someone in a polo shirt playing golf, tennis, or another racket sport. Glance at a can of non-alcoholic (NA) beer Partake, NA beverage Barbet or Chestnut, and you’ll see skinny serif fonts that look nearly identical to the fonts of classic American brands such as Ralph Lauren, L.L. Bean and Vineyard Vines.

Even the color palettes on some of these cans include contrasting pink and green stripes reminiscent of college rugby team uniforms, or bright pastels that would fit in at any polo match or horse race.

More news: Behind the rise of Poppi

But there’s more to the preppy beverage branding trend than trying to keep up with TikTok virality and fashion magazines. Many of the creatives behind these designs claim they opted for the aesthetic not because they wanted their company to seem preppy, but because they hadn’t seen their competition (such as Budweiser or Brooklyn Brewery) using these design elements before. And it’s important to stand out, especially on those crowded grocery store shelves coveted by many DTC brands.

Take Partake, an NA beer company based in Canada, for instance. In June, Partake rebranded from a more maximalist, distressed, and loud aesthetic to one that includes skinny serif fonts and pastels. As one Twitter user put it, the new look from Partake is following the “yuppie/80s” trend.

But Danielle McWaters, founder and creative director at Designsake Studio, the agency that did the recent rebrand for Partake, said her team wasn’t aiming to make the brand look preppier. Instead, she wanted to make a can that would stand out on a crowded beverage brand shelf.

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In the past, grocery shoppers rarely considered how a beverage or condiment they purchased would look in their refrigerator or on their tables at dinner, so the branding didn’t have to be particularly strong—at least, according to Marlee Bruning, creative director at WPP-owned design agency Design Bridge and Partners.

But when we came out of the height of the pandemic and people started going back to in-person social gatherings, “grocery store accessorizing” became more commonplace, Bruning said. These beverages, for instance, aren’t things that sit in your cupboard—they’re something that you might bring to a barbecue or a friend's house, Bruning said, adding that “this is sort of a public badging of who you are, but in an accessible way."

While Design Bridge hasn’t worked on any preppy-looking DTC beverage brands, it has worked with beverage clients such as British brewery Greene King.

Many preppy-looking beverage brands started out selling their drinks only online but soon followed the ongoing trend of DTC companies flocking toward retail shelves in order to scale. That means they have an incentive to brand themselves as prestige products that someone can take out into the world and use to express their identity.

“The functional beverage category in a Whole Foods or Target, it’s becoming a very crowded space,” Partake’s McWaters said in an interview, adding that she wanted to avoid the maximalist trends happening in the space.

Unlike NA offerings from beverage brands that McWaters said can look a bit “busy” or overly masculine such as Brooklyn Brewery or Budweiser, McWaters said she wanted Partake’s new look to be a “bit more classic, a bit more unfussy—clean.”

Andrea Grand, who co-founded Barbet in December 2021, offered a similar sentiment, saying the brand doesn’t “necessarily try to lean into the preppy vibe” that the signature stripes and font on its cans give off. Instead, Grand’s goal was to design a brand that could always be on trend, but not necessarily a trend.

As Stefanie Gilmore, head of strategy for North America at Design Bridge, who studied fashion before working at the agency put it, “preppy is kind of never out of fashion. … It comes back like every decade.”

Leaders at other brands, such as Chestnut Sports Club and Clubby Seltzer, said the country club aesthetic their brands now give off was a byproduct of them being centered around sports such as golf and tennis.

For instance, when Adam Zloto, the founder of Chestnut Sports Club, started the low-ABV beer company earlier this year, he was looking to create a beer that was easy to drink while playing country club sports. Chestnut Sports Club sells what he calls “playable” beers—also known as low-ABV beers—that a golfer could drink a few of over 18 holes without getting too intoxicated.

Golf and tennis happen to be sports that people have historically played at country clubs, so the aesthetic around them—which Zloto built into his branding—naturally feels preppy.

“It feels premium, that was the goal. But it also really came from a true lifestyle perspective,” Zloto said in an interview. “The inspiration draws from everything from classic colors of sport, the green and the white, think of golf, tennis. The lines around [the can] represent sport lines that you see whether it’s the tennis court lines or the hash on fields. And then a touch of that retro-nostalgic feel from the country club,” he continued.

“It’s more about a lifestyle than the beer itself,” Zloto said.

‘All brands are fashion now’

“I think the relationship between the CPG world and the fashion world is [that they’re] one,” Bruning said. “They’re influenced by the same cultural influences that bring you to the same points.”

“Brands like Barbet and Partake take this gated-off world and put it in this convenient can that you can then buy,” Bruning said, adding that “it’s such an easy way to take back what has been closed off to you for decades. It's this mass democratization of elite culture.”

Because these brands made certain preppy design choices (such as Barbet making the top of its product cream and not white, which “is such a preppy choice,” according to Bruning), consumers purchasing these drinks feel like they have access to the elite and luxurious Ivy League, country club lifestyle—for the price of a can of soda or beer.

Now, “you don't have to wear an Hermes bag to say, I'm classy. You can buy a Barbet,” Bruning continued, saying that she thinks “all brands are fashion now.”

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