CASE 04 — 2020–2022
BRAND / PRODUCT / PACKAGING / CPG
From values session to USDA-organic launch to acquisition by Tanasi — a CBDa brand built to outweigh a category\u2019s stigma.
Planetarie is a women-owned, Colorado-based wellness company producing USDA-organic CBDa products. The founder, a healthcare entrepreneur with a clinical background, had developed a one-of-a-kind patent-pending process to extract CBDa from hemp using only water — no chemicals, no waste, the molecule preserved in its raw form. The science was sound; the category was a minefield.
CBD in 2020 still inherited the cannabis-counterculture aesthetic that kept serious investors and consumers away. The category was crowded with a few large players, adoption was slow, and public education was effectively zero. A new entrant needed to feel credible to a clinician, an Olympic athlete, and a sceptical consumer — and to do it without saying "premium" once.
Before any visual work we ran sessions to distill the internal values and culture — who Planetarie was, why it existed, and who it was speaking to. Every later decision (the mark, the type, the packaging materials, the photography) traced back to those sessions. Branding from the inside out, in the literal sense.
The CBD category in 2020 still carried the cannabis-counterculture aesthetic that kept serious investors and consumers away. Visual positioning ran adjacent to trusted med-tech — clean type, restrained palette, organic-product framing — underwritten by science (a patent-pending water-only extraction) and endorsements from athletes and physicians.
Packaging carried the values the copy claimed: USDA organic certification, the water-extraction process printed on the box, materials chosen for environmental neutrality. Each tincture, softgel, and topical reinforced the same story; nothing on the package asked the buyer to take the brand’s word for it.
The category’s adoption problem was credibility, not awareness. Olympic athletes and medical practitioners came in at launch as the credibility layer — featured across the site, packaging, and editorial. Trusted faces beat market positioning every time.
Planetarie won Best Tincture at the Colorado Cup, third place for Best Topical, and earned its USDA organic certification. Patent filed; products established as a non-addictive pain-relief alternative. The company was acquired by Tanasi.
"Instead of a one-size-fits-most template, what I found with this team was a truly customized and effective group of creative talent. They absolutely nailed the brand voice, image, and all of the accoutrements to accompany the exact vision we had for our company. I am certain that this company would not be where we are today without the creative genius of the team."— Stacy Cason · CEO & founder, Planetarie