The partnership is the hard part.

Campari wanted a snack that belonged next to a Negroni, not just near it on a gift table.

Getting there meant designing a partnership before we designed a bag.

The partnership is the hard part.
Most co-branded products fail before the packaging gets designed. The partnership itself never gets built.

Campari wanted a snack that belonged next to a Negroni, not just near it. The idea was simple: a bespoke popcorn flavored to match the cocktail's grapefruit, dragon fruit and peach notes. The execution wasn't.

Two brands, one idea.
A pairing like this sounds obvious once it exists. Before it exists, it's two companies with different priorities, different timelines and no shared vocabulary for what "on brand" means to the other side.

Campari knew the flavor story it wanted to tell. Eatable Popcorn knew what a shelf-stable production run could actually support. Neither of those things automatically talks to the other.

That's usually where these projects stall. Not in the design software. In the negotiation nobody budgeted time for.


Where we came in.

We didn't start with a packaging brief. We started by project managing the partnership itself — getting both companies aligned on flavor, format, timeline and how the finished product would actually look on a shelf or a bar cart.

Only once that was locked did the packaging work start: color, typography, a look that could sit next to a bottle of Campari without competing with it.

Why the order matters.

Design the bag first and the partnership second, and you end up designing around assumptions nobody confirmed. Build the partnership first, and the packaging becomes the easy part — a translation of a decision that's already made, not a negotiation happening inside the file.

The popcorn works because it does double duty. It's a snack on its own, and it's a cue that reminds a shopper of the drink it was built to sit beside. That has to be true of the whole partnership, not just the copy on the bag.


More occasions, not more shelf space.

The real win here isn't a new SKU. It's a new reason for Campari to be top of mind — a couch night, a dinner party, a moment that has nothing to do with the liquor aisle.

Brand partnerships get pitched constantly. Very few get built well enough to actually ship.

We designed the packaging. We built the partnership underneath it.

It Happens Here.