Chris Znerold Product + Brand Systems · AI Design Engineering

The Deli Counter

Head of Brand & Product (fractional) for Schwazze, 2024 Launched, 2024

Strategy:

Schwazze needed a flower brand that could win at the counter, where the category makes its sale. Merchandising became the brand: a card handed across rather than a script.

Design:

The look is a wordmark and thermal portraits. The system I ran put effects and potency up front on the strain cards, carried them to the counter and the pouches, and into the brand film, which I directed.

Leadership:

I led it through Portal as fractional head of brand and product: naming research, art direction, production and project management. Within six months it was Colorado’s top-selling flower brand by the company’s count, and the merchandising did a lot of that.

Product in Hand

Effects up front.

A strain card: Cadillac Rainbows, effects and potency on the front, a thermal illustration on the back. Three stand-up pouches in thermal gradients, green through violet.

Two Cadillac Rainbows strain cards on a peach ground, one showing the flower and its data, the other a thermal illustration
Three Somatic stand-up flower pouches in green, orange and violet thermal gradients, each carrying the wordmark and the brand line

Product in Life

Read the card, pick.

The budtender hands you the Chimera card rather than reciting it. You read the effects and the potency and pick. The pouch matches the card.

A dispensary interior with Somatic panels along the back bar, next to a framed yellow Chimera strain card listing effects and potency

In the wild

Posters, jars, a wall.

A dispensary brand has to live outside the store too. The effect words ride a poster wall, framed prints, labels and a tee, and the jars make the shelf read as one thing.

In the wild01/5
A wall of Somatic posters on a brick block: Of the body for the mind, Chill Soothe Relax, Escape the norm, Celebrate Your Senses, a skater walking past
Three framed Somatic posters on a brick wall, each a thermal-toned portrait over the line Of the body, for the mind
The system on a tile counter: Fresh on the Shelf labels for Balance and Hollywood Gelato, a green tee, a framed print and a jar
Three Somatic display jars of flower in thermal gradients, labeled White Rainbow, Wedding Cake and Cheetah Piss
The key art: the wordmark and Of the body, for the mind over a thermal-toned portrait of a man exhaling smoke

Brand film

Grow room to shelf.

51 seconds from the grow room to the shelf, sound off. I directed it through Portal, and a commissioned motion graphics designer produced it.

Product in Culture

The counter is the campaign.

Legal cannabis retail copied the pharmacy: a glass case and a clerk between you and the product. There are more flower brands than shelf. The shelf decides.

A wall-sized Somatic mural in a daylit room: the line “Of the body for the mind.” beside a thermal-toned portrait in magenta and orange
6Months

To Colorado’s top-selling flower brand, by the company’s count. The merchandising did a lot of it.

Position:

Head of Brand & Product (fractional) at Portal

Services:

Strategy, merchandising, film

Partner:

Schwazze

Status:

Launched, 2024