Eat Life to the Fullest
Wagyu is more than just meat — it’s life itself
As the old saying goes, ‘You are what you eat.’ So, who are you if you eat Wagyu beef?
That’s the question we needed to answer when Lone Mountain Wagyu, a cattle ranch in New Mexico with an all-Wagyu herd, approached us to help reframe their brand. They’d had a lot of success selling their beef to Michelin-starred restaurants across the country, but hadn’t quite cracked the direct-to-consumer market yet.
Starting with their existing customers, we wanted to understand why people bought Wagyu — an expensive, extraordinarily marbled luxury beef originally from Japan — and what it meant to them. Through our research, we discovered that our core customers were people who were deeply passionate about what they did for a living, were fiercely independent, and motivated from within. So, if we wanted to reach them on their own terms, we’d have to position Wagyu as life-affirming and indulgent, but also unpretentious and refined. It’s what you want to eat when you know you’ve made it, but don’t necessarily want to brag about it. And it’s what you want to eat when you want to eat, literally, the best beef in the world.
With this, we saw an opportunity for Lone Mountain Wagyu to stand for more than just fancy meat, and represent something far greater. Eating Wagyu beef is a celebration of all that is wonderful in life. In this, Lone Mountain Wagyu could be the impetus to get you started on a journey of experiencing all that life has to offer. And so, their new brand positioning, ‘Eat Life to the Fullest,’ was born.
Agency Remo+Oob, Ltd., Los Angeles & New York
Client Lone Mountain Wagyu
Role Brand Positioning, Brand Strategy, Creative Direction, Art Direction, Design
Logo
We began by redesigning the company’s logo, inspired by the iconic Lone Mountain (an actual mountain that sits on the edge of the ranch), the beauty of the New Mexico landscape, and the clean lines of their award-winning ranch house.
Imagery
To visually distinguish ourselves, we turned to illustration as the visual base for all our communications — something universal that spoke to the idea of celebrating and living well, and that was as far from the typical meat branding as we could imagine. Our iconography would be a mix of images from the ranch, the world of food, and the world of living-it-up. (Illustration was also incredibly extensible, and more cost-effective than photography — important considerations for a small, but mighty, company.)
Photography, when required, placed the products in the context of a life well-lived — avoiding the category clichés of cowboys, ranches, and serious-looking meat.
The Brand in Action
Having begun with the basics of Lone Mountain Wagyu’s brand and mission, we are currently doing a company-wide re-think, examining how everything from their products and packaging, to collateral and advertising can become prompts to help people start eating, and living, life to the fullest.
