Valentina Vicent - Vita Coco

The short version

Art director of Vita Coco's in-house creative team in New York. I managed the packaging system across Tetra Pak, shrink wrap, screen-printed plastic and wrap-around jar labels, plus retail displays, events, production for every campaign, and the files that held it all together.

2015–20: In-office from Groundhog Day 2015 to late summer 2017, then freelance.
3 + agencies: Designers in-house at our peak, plus agency partners like Madwell.
$1B: I was there the year Vita Coco first hit $1 billion in sales.
In-house: Photo, video and social brought in-house, cutting agency costs.

01 · The team

Finally, an in-house team

Vita Coco was founded in 2003 and kicked off the coconut water wars. By 2010 it was the best-selling coconut water in the world, with super-fans and celebrity investors like Madonna, Rihanna and Kelly Slater. Around then, Ed had been the brand's only in-house designer for a few years and couldn't keep up. I was traveling through Venezuela and Argentina when I applied for the job as a joke.

I started on Groundhog Day 2015. Ed and I only overlapped for a year, but the team kept growing, to three designers in-house plus agency partners, as I grew into my first art director role. We're all still friends, and we still team up on special projects.

Ed had built an impressive setup: a Wufoo form that fed into Trello, which synced to Evernote so the wider team could see our work, because nothing better existed yet. I caught the DesignOps bug for good: agile workflows, and a better process every time a new tool appeared.

My first priority was a proper Creative Library on Dropbox. Our files had passed through a string of freelancers and random agencies, and it showed. The structure I built became the team's shared language, and it's the backbone of this story.

The Creative Library wireframe. Educational, Seasonal and Sustaining creative became our everyday vocabulary, and they shape the chapters below.

02 · Educational creative

Teaching coconut water

Today everyone knows the benefits of coconut water and coconut oil. When we started, our biggest marketing job was explaining them. So we made Coco Notes: little educational brochures handed out with samples at events, in stores and on the street, starring an adorable coconut character who made it all fun.

Eventually we realized the sample itself could do the teaching: a 200ml Tetra Pak with the whole lesson printed on it. It was Ed's last big project at Vita Coco, and he still proudly keeps one of the first samples we got back.

Small blue Vita Coco Tetra Pak samples on ice, printed with Coco Note facts — The 200ml Coco Note Tetra Pak.

The Coco Notes

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Coco Note for coconut water: front and back of a die-cut brochure — Coconut water

Coco Note for Vita Coco Café coconut water with coffee — Café

Coco Note about the Coconut Community farming program — Coconut Community

Coco Note for coconut oil: Swear by it, in the kitchen, in the bathroom — Coconut oil

Coco Note infographic: Sustainability goes beyond recycling — Sustainability

For anyone who wants the details: I walk through the work myself.

03 · Packaging

One system, every size

Packaging got most of our in-house energy from day one. The challenge was making the creative look right across the whole range, from the smallest 330ml packs to the 1L, with the same elements, every flavor and a lot of languages, all feeling unmistakably Vita Coco.

I managed the system across Tetra Pak, complex shrink wrap, screen-printed plastic and wrap-around jar labels. Ed and Rhea did some really cool flavor evolutions, like Lemonade and Lemon Tea, inspired by lemonade-stand awnings. Kids' packs were short-lived but fun, with a die-line built for lunch boxes.

I worked on many versions of Coconut Oil, and on our biggest bottle, the 1.5L sustainable PET, where getting the shrink wrap accurate was the real challenge. Then came the departures: Coconut Wipes, Lotion, Milk, Yogurt and even Ice Cream. And we had lots of fun with outer cases and custom variety packs for big-box retailers.

Two hands raising Vita Coco coconut juice cans against a blue sky

The Vita Coco range while I was there: Tetra Paks, a bottle and a coconut oil jar on a beach with a fresh coconut — The range while I was there.

The Vita Coco range today: cartons, bottles and cans on a pale blue background — And where the range is today.

From the production files

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Two Vita Coco coconut oil squeeze tubes with cream curling out — Coconut Oil, in squeeze tubes

Shrink-wrap production art for a chilled Vita Coco bottle, with dielines and measurements — Shrink-wrap production art for the chilled bottles

Shrink-wrap production art, flavor variation — One template, many flavors

Shrink-wrap production art, another flavor variation — Every panel checked against the die-line

A single-serve Vita Coco coconut oil pouch — A single-serve Coconut Oil pack

Vita Coco Kids pouches in Apple Island, Very Cherry Beach and Paradise Punch — Vita Coco Kids, with a die-line made for lunch boxes

Vita Coco Cold Brew coffee cartons — Cold Brew

A pack of Vita Coco coconut oil wipes — Coconut Wipes, one of the departures

A wood-grain Vita Coco influencer seeding kit box with a Tetra Pak — Influencer seeding kits got the fun treatment too

The long versionWant the details? I recorded a walkthrough of the packaging work, in my own words.

04 · Sustaining creative & hard POS

In the wild

Internally, anything durable was "sustaining creative" or "hard POS": truck wraps, sketches for big events and in-store activations, shrink wraps, and the corrugated and wooden pieces that brought displays to life.

We designed coolers, fridges, awnings, many kinds of palm trees and great beach swag. We dressed our brand ambassadors and their rides, from tricycles with fridges on the back to golf carts and vans with real coconuts on the roof. And over the years, a lot of influencer kits.

From sketch to street

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Display sketch: cases stacked under a palm tree, a beach umbrella and a lifeguard-style stand — Display sketch: palm tree and lifeguard stand

Display sketch: a pallet of cases on sand under a beach umbrella — A pallet that turns into a beach

Display sketch shaped like the blue Vita Coco van, stacked with cases — A floor display shaped like our van

Wooden crate tower with baskets of coconuts and cartons — Crate tower with coconut baskets

Tall wooden crate shelf display — Wooden crate shelf

Life-size Chrissy Teigen standee on a pallet of Vita Coco cases — Chrissy Teigen, in standee form

Car wrap illustration: Hydrate naturally, with a beach scene — Car wrap: hydrate naturally

Coolers, a branded fridge and a wrapped van designed as one system — Coolers, fridge and van as one system

Box truck wrap: Our recipe is 15,000,000 years old. Roughly. — "Our recipe is 15,000,000 years old. Roughly."

An ambassador ride

Street team and the fridge trike

Three experiential highlights

The Slip 'n Slide beach

For the Slip 'n Slide events we designed a whole beach: custom huts, wooden signage, temporary tattoos, a branded selfie booth and phone-charging stations, all pretty innovative at the time.

Coconut Milk at Expo West

The Coconut Milk launch at Expo West was spectacular, with a huge cow lounging in a hammock and adorable swag. Next to it, a simpler Coconut Oil corner with a branded popcorn machine and cute disposable bags.

The Vita Coco booth at Expo West: sand, palm trees, wooden signs and a cow in a hammock

Kellogg's NYC, Times Square

My last project at Vita Coco, and the one with the most creative freedom. We took over the whole window: flying beach balls over a sandbox of cereal that looked like sand. We also made special menu items, foldable menus and every little detail to tropicalize the store.

Marker sketch of the window: a sandbox with beach balls, palm trees and a Kellogg's NYC sign — The sketch

The finished window: a sandbox of cereal with beach balls, Vita Coco bottles and a Kellogg's box — The window

05 · Seasonal creative & soft POS

The big summer campaigns

"Seasonal" mostly meant summer, when we launched our biggest campaigns and, naturally, sold the most coconut water. For most of them we partnered with Madwell, a Brooklyn agency with a bigger creative team and very cool ideas.

Madwell led the concepts and most of the design. As the in-house art director, I met with them to keep us aligned on concept, assets and needs, then took their work into production across every printed and digital channel. Agencies deliver high-level base creative, so a big part of my job was extending it, building the rest of the assets in the look we'd agreed on.

Hydrate Naturally

Our first series of iconic ads, starring Rihanna, plus posters with Kelly Slater and A-Rod.

Drafted by Nature

A sports-focused campaign with Julio Jones, Manti Te'o and Marshawn Lynch.

Stupidly Simple

Lines like "Our plant is a plant," and video spots starring Jane Lynch. Our first big national TV spots!

Chrissy Teigen in a safari outfit on a beach chair, for the Plant Manager contest

Plant Manager & Intern Contest

We riffed on "Our plant is a plant" with a search for a new Plant Manager, starring Chrissy Teigen, plus a first-of-its-kind Snapchat campaign with 3D tracking filters.