Promotional packaging for San Francisco’s Carrots Boutique by advertising firm, Pereira & O’Dell. (Package design variously credited to Chris M. Romero and also Dan Van Der Deen.)
The objective was to create a buzz around this high-end fashion boutique (CARROTS) and specifically around their men’s line, driving new male customers into the store. We created a limited edition, designer beer made from carrots. We brewed the beer, handcrafted the bottle wraps, and applied the labels. The 22(oz.) burlap-wrapped bottles were hand-delivered as gifts to specifically targeted men and the 12(oz.) beers were served at CARROTS-sponsored events and in-store to enhance men’s shopping experiences. Among the hundreds that received the bottle as a gift and the ones that tried it in the store, many people actually placed orders for beer to take home, turning a unique promotional item into a sexy and successful new product. Not to mention creating a buzz around the store.
The label and package design caters to the (presumably male) cartoon sensibility, wherein deceased creatures have X’s for eyes. Hence: a dead rabbit icon whose X-shaped eyes are also echoed in the orange stitching of the burlap “bottle wrap”. The burlap is another macabre touch, wrapping the bottle in a sort of burial shroud. The effect is dark and portentous—albeit in a cute, Tim Burton-ish sort of way.
This is a beer made from carrots, (for a store named “Carrots”) so that explains the rabbit. But why dead? “Dead rabbit” could be taken as a reference to girls getting pregnant—(as in “the rabbit died”)—but that seems unlikely to be the message here...
There was also a “Dead Rabbits” gang in NYC in the 1850s whose story was fictionalized in Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. (Again: not likely the intentional reference for us here.)
Is the idea just that Carrots Beer packs such a punch that our rabbit is merely knocked out and not dead at all? That might be closer to it... Plus, multiple Xs have implications with regard to alcoholic beverage quality and —(in the public’s cartoon imagination, at least)— with regard to alcohol potency. Think: XXX.
Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

















Last month, Debby and I discovered a small, mom and pop alpaca farm on Route 47 (south NJ) right next door to a produce stand that we often go to. Tish Carpinelli let us feed her animals out back and, since it was Debby’s birthday, she picked herself out a sweater from the little store, 




















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