SummaryMy RoleGoals & UsersDesignsGuerrilla MarketingLaunch VideoseComm & PPCCompetition#1 on AmazonFuture

TIMELINE
Sept 2022 to
Present

PLATFORM
Desktop &
Mobile Website

ROLES
Creative Director &
Lead Product Designer

The IDGAF Brand
Millennials deserve

The idea behind #LubeLife was co-created by myself and our then-CFO Joe W. Our parent company CC Wellness already had a successful Intimate Wellness brand called JO (or System JO) that was the leader in terms of market share in the Adult Retail Industry. We struggled to make JO successful on the Direct to Consumer (D2C) eCommerce level. We also had relationships with distributors and retailers who did not want us to sell JO D2C because they feared the lowered prices of eCommerce would cannibalize their physical retail sales of JO. Also, the JO brand was much or serious, subtle, and branded to look as pharmaceutical as possible to evoke a sense of authority and quality. Through our research and analysis, that type of brand wouldn’t resonate well with the consumer that would purchase intimate products online.While launching the JO brand as an eCommerce D2C brand did not make sense, we still wanted to launch a brand in that space. Based on our research, we saw a need for a brand that spoke directly to millennials. There were many brands that treated intimacy as somewhat of a taboo topic, that went for more of the discrete route. There were brands focused on women’s health and gender specific situations. But nothing truly celebrated intimacy as something that was fun!We went through many concepts and styles, but ultimately landed on #LubeLife, the only brand designed for Millennials that makes them feel confident and excited for sexual adventure because it is long lasting and great tasting. It was created in late 2017, to fill the need for a sexual wellness brand what didn’t treat intimacy like something to be ashamed of. But to go further, we wanted to create a brand that was in your face, unapologetic, straight forward, but most importantly a brand that did not take itself seriously and had a clever humorous whit to it’s voice and tone.

My Role in Redefining what is taboo

My main role in the development of the #LubeLife brand was being the Creative Director. Initially in 2017 the Creative team was very small, so the development of the logo, colors, voice, tone, packaging and social media marketing was fell solely on my hands, acting as the Lead Designer and Creative Director. As the years passed, the Creative team and Marketing team grew so my role naturally evolved more towards the Creative Director role, with me leading a team consisting of our Lead Designer (Guillermo B), two Graphic Designers (Jaylynn M and Anne T), and our copywriters (Andree W and Jakob S), while working closely with our Marketing Director (Tara M), Digital Marketing Director (Hallie D), or Social Media Manager (Marcella E), and our Associate Brand Manager (Brittani T).

Screw What's Taboo...Literally

My main role in the development of the #LubeLife brand was being the Creative Director. Initially in 2017 the Creative team was very small, so the development of the logo, colors, voice, tone, packaging and social media marketing was fell solely on my hands, acting as the Lead Designer and Creative Director. As the years passed, the Creative team and Marketing team grew so my role naturally evolved more towards the Creative Director role, with me leading a team consisting of our Lead Designer (Guillermo B), two Graphic Designers (Jaylynn M and Anne T), and our copywriters (Andree W and Jakob S), while working closely with our Marketing Director (Tara M), Digital Marketing Director (Hallie D), or Social Media Manager (Marcella E), and our Associate Brand Manager (Brittani T).

Brand Goals

  • Create a fun, blunt, excited brand in the intimate wellness space that laughs in the face of society’s taboo topics
  • Let our JO brand thrive in the Adult Retail space while gaining market share on Amazon with #LubeLife
  • Create humorous & engaging content focused around video for social media and our eCommerce product listings
  • Build a Direct to Consumer website, build our email lists, and retarget through social media and search ads
  • Take market share from KY and be THE BRAND millennials think of when choosing personal lubricants
Full #LubeLife Brand Guidelines

Our Users

Whether male or female, gay/straight or bi, trans or cis, all are welcome!While we aim to be fun, irreverent, bold and evocative, the humor should never cross the line and become alienating or offensive. If everyone can't be in on the joke, then it's not something we'd say. Ultimately, we targeted sexually aware male and female millennials, who regardless of orientation, desire fun, pleasurable sexual exploration.

Package Design Strategy

Making the logo “as big as possible” is most times obnoxious and not very tasteful. But for this brand, making the words LUBE and LIFE as prominent on the front of the packaging was our goal, to lean into the in-your-face, straight to the point, unapologetic feel of the brand. We also knew that consumers sometimes could get lost in the differences between water-based vs silicone based lubricant, oil vs water, hybrid formulas, flavored formulas, sensation formulas, etc. So we made sure to make the descriptor of the product and its key defining feature the 2nd largest element on the packaging, just behind the logo.

While the product itself was priced at a very competitive “value” price, we knew using a quality product needed to look like quality as well. So we decided to make all products with a silver metallic material, masked by opaque white areas so that the metallic accented colors and key defining features would stand out and be elevated from the rest of the design. We also wanted our users to feel quality in the product, both in the liquids themselves during intimacy but also when holding the product, so we went with a soft-touch satin finish on all of our packaging.

These choices led to a design that was both simple and clean, while also being full of personality and character.

Early Guerrilla Marketing

The Eggplant and the Box

Role: Designer / Copywriter / Animator / Video Editor / Basically Everything

Summary: During 2018, we had to be scrappy because we didn’t have the biggest budget for this brand. We began to see memes and humorous content getting more engagement from our audience. I decided to create a short animated video about “Eggplant Moisturizer” for 2 reasons. One was innuendos and tongue-in-cheek content was exactly the tone that worked for #LubeLife. Secondly, we wouldn’t be flagged by Facebook or Instagram (at first) because it’s was not considered “adult content”. I wrote a script, recorded myself voice acting it out with my phone in my car, and animated a few Adobe Stock graphics to create this short video. It was our first “viral” piece of content that was watched almost 200K times, commented on and shared hundreds of times. We knew we were onto something.
‍

Asking Strangers in Venice Beach to Taste Lube

Role: Director / Videographer / Editor

Summary: I always liked the idea of getting real people's reaction to our products flavors. Like our brand, it felt genuine, spontaneous, and fun. The idea was to drive to Santa Monica and Venice Beach, and set up almost like a Lemonade Stand, but for Flavored Lubes. To incentivize people to try it, we were offering an assortment of ice creams and water bottles during the hot southern California day. To our excitement, a good amount of people were willing to taste lubricants! And almost unanimously people loved them and were pleasantly surprised by the tastiness and accuracy of the flavors. The 2 videos above are some of the highlights.
‍

Our First Organic Influencer UGC Content

Summary: Social Media Influencer Tara Babcock did a segment on her channels about how "trash" flavored lubricants usually are. He did an unboxing of a couple of our Flavored Lubricants and her reaction was priceless.

A Little More Money To Play With

YouTube Launch Video Campaign:

Role: Creative Director / Script Writer / Videography Director
Outsourced: Video Editing

Summary: We hired 2 of the more prominent Youtube Influencers at the time Whitney and Steve from the Phillip DeFranco Show to be our on camera personalities. I came up with the general scripts and key points to hit. I also allowed Whitney and Steve to ad lib whatever ideas came to them during the shoot. We came up with 2 a bit more straight forward brand videos. And a handful of other videos that really showcased the brand’s persona. These videos have over 1 million views in total on YouTube.
‍

google, amazon, and social media ads

Product Promo Videos

Role: Creative Director

Summary: This is where we really started to crystalize the visual look and feel of our videos. Bold vibrant colors. Bold fonts. Quippy humorous headlines. Inclusive normal people that reflect our target audience. Upbeat quirky music. These videos increased our conversions on Amazon better than any other content to date.
‍

Competing Directly With K-Y

#LubeLife Sensation Kit for Two

Role: Creative Director, Lead Packaging Designer, Script, Storyboarding

Summary: To truly compete with KY head on and take market share, we needed product that competed with their #1 selling product, the KY “Yours & Mine” Couples Kit for Him and Her. We wanted to combine two different sensations (a Warming Lubricant and a Cooling Lubricant) that wasn’t specifically for men or for women. More importantly, it wasn’t positioned as a heterosexual couples kit, but rather a “Pleasure Kit” or any two people (gay, straight, bi, non-binary, etc). We also promoted how if used in conjunction, the kit would create a third exhilaratingly new sensation!

Reaching #1 on Amazon + 100k 5 Star Reviews

Reaching #1 on Amazon

In late 2017, we officially launched #LubeLife personal lubricants on Amazon. Our hero products were a water-based personal lubricant and a silicone-based personal lubricant. One that was versatile and easy to clean. And the other long lasting and silky smooth. We knew getting people to purchase a brand new product from a brand new company was going to be a hard sell. We also knew that we needed some social proof and real world reviews from people to really get traction and conversions.

Keys to Amazon Success
  • Monitored and priced our products to match (and beat) our competitors pricing
  • Constant optimization of the metadata and SEO information for higher likelihood of ranking high in searches
  • High Quality Product Photography
  • Lifestyle/Situational imagery that matched the tone of the brand
  • Quality A+ Content to flesh out the benefits and features of the product
  • Short funny videos showcasing both the brand’s persona and product features in a colorful and playful manner

Future Development

We recently incorporated a post configuration survey where we asked potential clients about their experience using our configurator tool and what they want to see in the future. We had an overwhelming response with our clients wanting more ultra premium high end componentry. There was a fair amount of people asking for CBD formulations which we are exploring with our research and development team. But the most requested feature, or want was to be able to the to configure multiple configurations at once. So that they could compare them more easily. Efforts are already in motion to address all of these fees, feedback

Back to Work