— mikescigars.com
- Naming
- Brand Development
- Package Design
- Advertising + Promotion
Challenge:
A more crowded market there never was. Welcome to the super premium handmade cigar market. Store shelves literally overflowing with world-renowned cigar brands like Cohiba®, Montecristo®, Macanudo®. Brands that in some cases had an 80-plus-year head start and tradition of the finest cigar brands in the world. Brands that had loyal followings and commanded high prices.
How then do you compete? One would be insane to attempt to go head to head on longevity? Maybe try to create a brand that looked decades old? Experienced cigar consumers parting with eight to ten dollars would see through that veil in an instant.
Bold Approach
When everyone is going right….Left it was. Not because it was a fun creative exercise, but rather research showed us that a sizable group of cigar consumers, while loyal to a legacy brand, were loyal to it because it was what their father or uncle smoked. They were not wedded to that brand—instead went there by inertia.
So we created not your father’s cigar, but the AXE® body spray of cigars—enter Helix. Ganton created the name, brandmark and package—everything required to launch the new cigar brand. And you couldn’t veer more left than a blue cigar box with electrifying graphics that could not be missed.
The best-selling cigar launch of the decade.
Results
And boy were the old-time cigar makers surprised when they said a blue cigar box would never sell.