RTD

A Soft Launch Gets Shelf-Ready

Building a complete brand system from the ground up.

What we did

Thinking

Making

Services Provided

Brand Positioning

Brand Story, Boilerplate, Copy

Mission, Vision, Principles, Voice

Package Design

Print Pre-Production

Sales and Promo Materials

Digital Assets

POP/Retail Design

Photography Direction

Video Direction & Script

Website Design

Apparel & Merchandise

Brand Identity & Guidelines

VALA's founder approached Even Odds after a soft launch the previous year. The brand was still in its infancy and needed comprehensive brand development before fully launching in the hyper-competitive Southern California RTD market.

The Challenge.

Everything but the logo.‍

With the exception of the original VALA logo mark, every other element of the brand needed to be reviewed and rebuilt: brand story, packaging, voice, digital presence, photography direction. This wasn't a refresh. It was a full brand build, and it needed to hold up against established players before VALA ever hit a shelf.

THinking

Positioning for a crowded market.

Southern California's RTD market is crowded. Hard seltzers, canned cocktails, and vodka sodas compete for the same shelf space and the same consumer. VALA had a differentiated product, vodka and birch water, low ABV, low calorie, but product features don't build brands. Positioning does.

We built the brand positioning around lifestyle, not ingredients. VALA isn't a health play. It's a seltzer for people who want simple ingredients without sacrificing taste or experience. The brand needed to feel premium, approachable, and effortless.

That meant developing the brand story, mission, vision, and voice from scratch, refining the existing tagline to better reflect lifestyle positioning, and building copy the team could use across press and retail. Mission, vision, and principles became internal alignment tools, giving the team a shared reference point as they scaled.

The positioning gave the brand a foundation. Everything else built from there

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Making

A complete brand system.

The original VALA packaging lacked cohesion: color-coded flavor bands, no clear hierarchy, product information hidden, and design that didn't reflect the premium lifestyle positioning the brand needed to own. It wasn't ready for retail.

We rebuilt the entire package design system with clean typography, bold vertical VALA lockups, and clear, minimal flavor differentiation through color and type. Product benefits are displayed prominently without cluttering the design. Where the original cans read as scattered and low-shelf-impact, the new system feels modern, confident, and shelf-ready.

Packaging was just one piece. We built the full creative ecosystem: website design, social media templates, sales materials and founder story booklets, POP and retail displays, photography direction and shot lists, video scripts, apparel, and brand guidelines that codified everything.

The brand went from fragmented to cohesive. Every touchpoint reflected the same positioning, voice, and visual language.

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Thinking + Making

From soft launch to market-ready.

VALA came to us with a logo and a soft launch. We gave them a complete brand system: positioning that differentiated them in a crowded market, packaging that reflected premium lifestyle rather than just functional benefits, and a creative ecosystem that worked across every touchpoint.

Building a brand in stages creates inconsistency: packaging that doesn't match the website, social media that doesn't match the sales deck. VALA invested in comprehensive brand development instead, and every touchpoint launched cohesively.

This is what comprehensive brand development looks like. Not just a logo or a can design, but a complete system built from strategy through execution.

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