launch strategy for beverage startups

THE CHALLENGE

How do you sell wine without its most iconic ingredient?
Before we could approach branding for non-alcoholic luxury beverages, we had to confront the core contradiction: how do you sell wine without its defining ingredient, especially in Italy, where wine is culture, ceremony, and national pride?

This wasn’t about surface design, but it was about crafting a visual identity for wellness-driven products that didn’t read like substitutes, but as statements, standalone expressions of lifestyle, modern indulgence, and design-forward clarity.

The real challenge wasn’t just packaging or storytelling for a premium drink brand.
We built a brand that didn’t mimic wine but redefine its codes, one that could achieve its goal with both traditional wine audiences and an international wellness market without dilution or compromise.

STRATEGIC INSIGHT

In a saturated lifestyle market, consumers no longer buy only products, but they adopt value systems.
Frizero didn’t need to shout “zero alcohol.” It needed to embody freedom of choice, expressed through a visual identity for wellness-driven products and a tone that felt premium.

This is about avoiding common packaging and storytelling for premium drink brands and instead about shifting perception, from “without alcohol” to with intention: more elegance, more versatility, more cultural relevance.

We anchored the strategy in a truth that defines modern luxury: the ability to say no, without losing status.
That meant avoiding the tropes of abstinence, cutting through minimalist clichés, and building a brand architecture for non-alcoholic beverages that looked and behaved like legacy Italian design refined, international, and self-assured.
 
THE IDEA: FROM LIQUID TO LIFESTYLE

Frizero wasn’t positioned as a non-alcoholic option.
We curated a complete brand identity designed around the idea of Luxury Without Limits.
Frizero’s claim "There Is Much More to Choose" became not just packaging copy, but a manifesto: choice, not compromise; celebration, not substitution.

A call for conscious celebration, without compromise, a different class of experience.

What we did:
• Developed a visual system that nods to traditional wine codes while expressing a category of its own
• Created a verbal identity that blends clarity, sensuality, and self-confidence
• Designed a content architecture that connects wellness culture, modern rituals, and premium alternatives across channels
• Built a digital and campaign toolkit for use in both domestic and international markets
• Crafted packaging design that feels equally at home in a Michelin-starred setting or a concept retail shelf

TAKEAWAYS
• Absence becomes value when the story is stronger than the ingredient.
• Wellness products don’t need to scream “clean,” they need to look and feel complete.
• If you want to redefine a category, don’t fit into it but recode it.
• Luxury is no longer about more, but it’s about how you frame what’s less.