Bad Mermaid
Website Design & Dev
AI
Content Marketing
Food & Drink
Consumer Brands
Background
The Challenge
Bad Mermaid had the important stuff: an addictive, better-for-you energy drink built on oceanic superfoods, and a bold, graphic-forward package that stopped people in their tracks. What they didn’t have was a digital ecosystem to convert that attention into customers. The energy drink aisle is dominated by sugar bombs and neon legacy players; the “healthy alt” set is growing fast but crowded. Bad Mermaid needed a DTC experience that could cut through: educate on unfamiliar ingredients (spirulina, Irish moss), signal sustainability, and prove it was a viable challenger to mainstream energy—without losing its rebellious, slightly wild personality.
The ask wasn’t “make us a site.” It was “give us the connective tissue that ties product, purpose, and performance together—fast—so we can launch, educate, and scale.” With a lean team and limited internal bandwidth, they needed a creative partner who could embed quickly, steer strategy, and build something they could actually grow with.
01. Insight
Bad Mermaid’s edge isn’t just its ingredients—it’s its attitude. The real opportunity? Reposition energy as a lifestyle grounded in vitality, rebellion, and identity.
Bad Mermaid’s edge lives where vitality meets attitude: West Coast, oceanic, eco-minded, and unapologetically bold. Rather than soft wellness pastels, we leaned into the brand’s adventurous, “modern oceanic” look and feel. Designed to attract health-conscious early adopters, eco warriors, festival kids chasing glow-in-the-dark moments, and busy professionals who want clean fuel without the crash.
We anchored the strategy in the brand’s founding conviction: redefine energy through clean, natural, ocean-inspired ingredients, and do it in a way that advances sustainability and ocean conservation. That gave us permission to make the ocean the experience, not just the metaphor.
02. Brand & Digital Build
Building the Foundation Beneath the Surface
Bad Mermaid had a clear visual spark, but it needed a brand system that could bring structure, consistency, and longevity to that energy. We started by defining a digital-first foundation that could hold both personality and performance—an expanded color palette rooted in oceanic depth and vibrancy, a typographic system that balanced character with clarity, and motion principles that added flow and momentum to every interaction.
More than aesthetics, this was about strategic enablement. We built a system the team could scale—from PDPs to launch campaigns—without reinventing the wheel each time. Every asset tied back to a single strategic spine: deliver vitality, support sustainability, and empower bold self-expression.
As an embedded creative partner, we helped Bad Mermaid overcome internal constraints, navigate launch pressures, and implement a full DTC ecosystem that didn’t just express the brand—but grew it.
03. Experience Design
Designing an Emotional Current
The ocean doesn’t stand still, and neither does Bad Mermaid. We wanted users to feel that from the second they landed. So we designed the site to move like water: immersive scrolls that pull you under, animated elements that swell and drift, and layered depths that echo the feeling of being submerged in something bigger than yourself.
Our goal was to translate the brand’s emotional core into experience. Energy. Vitality. Rebellion. Flow.
We built motion into every interaction so visitors wouldn’t just see the oceanic identity, they’d ride it.
Bad Mermaid isn’t a drink. It’s a mood.
A Portal, Not a Product Page
We approached the homepage and PDPs like an ecosystem, not a funnel. Every section—whether a flavor module or sustainability stat—is part of the larger emotional world: oceanic, adventurous, alive. The goal was to make every user feel like they were stepping into the brand’s waters, not scrolling another Shopify site.
Rather than segmenting story and product, we layered the two. Cause messaging lives beside purchase CTAs. Functional callouts ride next to festival-ready visuals. Because in the Bad Mermaid universe, impact and indulgence aren’t opposites—they’re inseparable.
Building Mythology with Modern Tools
A brand this bold needs its own lore, but Bad Mermaid was early-stage. Because we didn’t have years of content or lifestyle assets to pull from, we made the magic ourselves. Using AI, we transformed the label designs into a full visual mythology: surreal underwater landscapes, party vignettes, and scroll-stopping product imagery to create assets that made the brand feel established and expressive from day one.By combining emerging tools with brand truth, we launched an experience that felt established, expressive, and emotionally charged—even on day one.
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