Haute Sugar Co.
Making couture concessions sound just as delicious as they taste.
Case Study Overview
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The Client
Where confection and couture meet and fall in love.
Haute Sugar Co. is a 90's kid's style-infused, sugary-chic, champagne bubble dream.
They take all the treats you craved as a kid, and seriously up-level them for your adult self -- turning things like ice cream and cotton candy into edible accessories that look (almost) too good to eat.
While they started as a catering service, when Savannah and Josh approached me they had just launched an online sweet shoppe of cotton candy puffs for celebrating, gifting, and self-spoiling.
The Industry
Cotton candy is for kids.
In the world of online sweet shoppes, marketing typically leans hard into nostalgia. After all, it's a treat that you used to have to ask your parents to buy for you. Other companies bank on the familiar experience of cotton candy and pair it with sophisticated flavors, or a custom color palette.
The Differentiator
Sugar = self-expression.
With packaging inspired by designers like Balenciaga, names pulled from your favorite early 00's songs, and puffs laced with good-for-you adaptogens, Haute Sugar is a celebration of the stylish adult you want to be.
The Customer
The Brand Character
A haute and hip gal who always has the new-new.
Haute Sugar's brand character is impecably on-trend, and influences her friends and family to be too.
At brunch, she orders blood orange mimosas with a collagen powder upgrade.
She also definitely plays Backstreet Boys during her workouts.
Celebratory
Celebratory
Haute Sugar Co. feels like your stylish bestie cheering you on. These products are designed to mark meaningful moment's in a woman's life -- a marriage, a baby, a breakup, or a moment of friendship and self-care.
We kept the tone high-energy and included conversational asides that sounded like what you'd hear at a brunch date with a friend.
Celebratory
Fashion-Informed
Fashion-Informed
The "haute" in Haute Sugar Co's name refers to haute couture. Each product's packaging is based off the collection of an iconic fashion designer.
Because we're appealing to a fashion-forward, brand-conscious customer, we pulled language from fashion magazines like Vogue and included a direct "Currently Wearing" callout highlighting the style inspiration behind each bag of cotton candy.
Fashion-Informed
Tres-Chic
Tres-Chic
Savannah drew her brand concept from, where else? The south of France. It was important to her that nods to France and French asides made their way into the story we were telling around her products.
We set one of our product story vignettes in Paris, and garnished our language with some French words for flavor.
Tres-Chic
Flirtatious
Flirtatious
They could finally delegate
Before this, if Haute Sugar's ultra-specific brand voice needed to make an appearance, Savannah had to do the writing personally. Once her brand was articulated outside of her head, she was finally able to delegate.
A cohesive brand experience
Thanks to carefully crafted messaging, the chicness, decadence, and playfulness their customers had learned to expect from their in-person experiences flowed effortlessly into their e-commerce platform.
Built-in trust and credibility
Because they maintained a consistent brand experience, clients who already trusted Haute Sugar Co's reputation were willing to make a leap to an entirely new product.
The Conclusion
Is your brand breaking the mold?
Let's make sure others feel just as passionately about your work as you do.
If you looked up "defying genre" in the dictionary, I'm pretty sure you'd just see a picture of Savannah, wearing pink plaid and waving at you.
Savannah and Josh are consummate brand builders and chameleons. Every business in their portfolio has a unique imagination-capturing concept and ends up in a flawless immersive experience.
(They're currently running a coffee shop in Tennessee and I think about booking a ticket to go visit it on a regular basis.)
Savannah was one of the first clients who allowed me write bigger, bolder, and more outrageous and honestly? I think she got me hooked.
This project is in my personal hall of fame, and I don't think it's going to be supplanted ANY time soon.
Onward and upward, Hautie! 🍬🍭🍫
