Bottling the spirit
of California

Bottling the spirit
of California

Bottling the spirit
of California

Bottling the spirit
of California

California Olive Ranch

Founded in 1998, California Olive Ranch is a pioneer in olive cultivation and production of affordable premium extra virgin olive oil. Today, the company is the largest producer of extra virgin olive oil pressed from California-grown olives, and a mainstay in over 29,000 US grocery retailers. In order to help enable growth in its core business and reach into some new ones, California Olive Ranch partnered with Ammunition to conceive and produce an expanded brand positioning, visual identity, product line structure, and packaging system.

Through a series of working sessions with leaders at California Olive Ranch, we were able to take the company’s history of challenging convention and embracing the pioneering spirit of California, and shape it into a market-facing brand position. This positioning also served as an organizational leadership tool, helping to align the entire team with a deeply held set of motivations and values.

To bring the positioning to life, we embarked on a rebranding effort that would build on the success of the existing brand identity, while creating space for expansion into new product lines, categories and formats. We also developed a branded information design system that reduced complexity and helped shoppers make sense of a vastly larger portfolio of products.

Services

Strategy
Brand Design
Packaging

Our goal with the visual design was to maintain the aura and feel of the brand that California Olive Ranch consumers love, while bringing added emotional range to the system. Central to the California Olive Ranch brand is its iconic olive Rancher, which we subtly evolved to give more presence and weight within the logo. Additionally, we created a new range of landscapes for the Rancher to live in, that emboldened and energized the packaging in a simple, iconic way. Coupled with an appetizing approach to color and information hierarchy, the new packaging system creates a distinct and coherent look that stakes out a clear territory on the shelf.

To improve the experience and efficiency of shipping California Olive Ranch products via important direct e-commerce channels, we created a variety of custom shipper designs and packaging formats. An exploration of new interchangeable components, structural materials and production processes, led us to multiple improvements, including a new aluminum structure that presents unique visual opportunities while reducing environmental impact.

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