Director of Retail Marketing Heavy Hitters
Jessey Zepeda
Having worked in cannabis before I was hesitant to give it a second chance but joining forces with JJ, David Pyle, and Rick Shenin for another round of epic brand-building was too good an opportunity to let pass by. The totality of this role had me serving as a creative director and production artist on packaging while also doing all of the 3d design for retail and managing all of our fabrication vendors. We were launching products every other month and I was in charge of creating retail kits and making retail directives for our sales force to implement in the field.
Having worked for over a dozen Fortune 500 companies. the biggest difference in Cannabis is that everything is on a budget. You have to know what you are doing to get finishes at the level you see in the images below because there is no time for prototyping and no money for making mistakes.
Upon starting in the role two major projects needed fast attention.
1. An influencer seeding kit for the diamond pre-roll product launch
2. The packaging design and production specifications for HVY 1000.
Heavy Hitters Diamond Seeding Kits
This project was a fast 1-month turnaround design to deliver to influencers. I hit the date and Brand and Sales were behind and pushed out the launch 1 week. This seeding kit is my second favorite seeding kit design behind the Hennessey Record Player from back in my careered days at Acme Scenic. The design is a gangster take on a cigar box embodying the Ed Hardy vibes of the brand while also being authentic to the OG Cannabis connoisseur by including intricacies like a lighting wick for sparking up a pre-roll. I owned every part of the design and execution.
Kit contents:
- Laser-etched Heavy Hitters Diamond Cigar Cutter
- Aluminum Diamond Grip Humidor
- 3 Diamond Pre-Rolls
- Laser Etched Heavy Hitters Diamond Zippo
- Organic Hemp Wick
- Hand-wrapped Soft Touch Box
- Silver Die Cut Branding
- Product Dividers And Infill Are All Post Consumer Substrates With 0 Glues For Easy Separation and Recyclability
HVY Grand 1000 mg Cannabis Tincture
This Clio Award Winning Packaging is detailed more in the press section of my website. I lead the creative direction of the packaging and the product development through the retail launch. Even though California is the pinnacle of cannabis branding few brands execute traditional product launches. We were able to roll out this product with exclusive participation from Caliva, MedMen, and Cookies who had exclusive rights to the product for the first two weeks.
These two projects only begin to skim the surface of the work I did in this role. I was asked to not hold back and deliver designs that would allow Mammoth to showcase their 4 major brands and this allowed me to flex my computational 3d design skills, explore augmented reality, and create award-winning retail designs.
See some of my favorite moments below.
