Habanebro’s Hot Honey
Building a fiery brand for a new hot honey contender.
Food & Drink
Brand Identity
The Challenge
Habanebro’s entered the hot honey market at a time when the category was rapidly growing. What had once been an under-the-radar condiment was becoming increasingly popular, bringing a wave of new food and drink brands into an already competitive market.
For Habanebro’s, the challenge was to enter this market without becoming another version of the same thing. They had the recipe and the heat, but needed a brand that could communicate that personality before a customer had even tasted the product. The goal was to create something bold, cheeky and unmistakable, to become a brand that could give people a reason to pick Habanebro’s over the next bottle on the shelf.
The Solution
I started by analysing the category to understand where competitors were playing it safe, then deliberately moved in the opposite direction. Bold typography, striking colours and confident graphics gave Habanebro’s a personality that felt as fiery and unapologetic as the honey itself, creating a food brand identity that could stand out on a crowded shelf.
The brandmark became the centrepiece. By combining a sliced chilli with a rough skull shape, we turned two of the brand’s key associations into a cheeky mascot with a character of its own. We then built flexibility into the wider identity, allowing the mascot to change expression, the Spice-o-meter to communicate different levels of heat, and a collection of distinctive brand shapes and patterns to create variety across packaging, marketing and digital applications without losing recognition.
The Result
The result is a distinctive and flexible brand identity that gives Habanebro’s a clear point of difference in an increasingly crowded food and drink market. The mascot creates an instantly recognisable visual hook, while the adaptable brand elements allow the identity to express different levels of heat and personality across packaging, marketing and digital applications. Instead of simply looking like another hot honey brand, Habanebro’s now has an identity that is as bold, playful and memorable as the product itself.
