NEON COWBOY: NASHVILLE 3083
Zach of Austin-based creative branding agency Mello contacted me in 2022 to work on web content for Neon Cowboy, a new seltzer brand emerging from Nashville, Tennessee, brewed by Bearded Iris.
Bearded Iris felt that the seltzer market was dominated by fake, monotonous flavours. As a departure, they made Neon Cowboy with a focus on real fruit as an adventurous alternative.
Mello’s take on branding involved creating energetic, analogue glitch content depicting the world of Nashville 3083, both of which would be shown on their website.
“Nashville, 3083. The city pulses with glittering, electric grit, a new frontier. The streets whisper the story of a cowboy—destined to change the path of partying forever. Legend holds that when the sun sets, a distant glow beckons only the boldest to discover its source. Saddle up.”
HEADER VIDEO
The header presents the world of Nashville 3083 via channel surfing.
Different channels show partygoers strolling on beaches, raving at concerts and singing at bars, all finely tuned to vibrant, glittering analogue textures showcasing the colour palettes of Neon Cowboy's fresh fruit flavours.
These are interspersed with carousels showcasing Neon Cowboy's products, glowing taglines and subliminal copy.
Channels
I licensed some footage from Adobe Stock for TV channels, then rescanned, glitched, composited and graded the plates to match the products' colour palettes.
Each carousel would feature a flavour, at least two products and a tagline, all rescanned and glitched for an analogue feel, tuned to the colour palette of each flavour.
PRODUCTS
Mello provided me with renders of the cans and multipacks. I rescanned each image, hit them with glitch textures corresponding to their colour palettes and composited the clean plates on top in Adobe Premiere.
BRANDED COPY
I asked Mello for some taglines that I could include in the carousels. They provided me with some and I glitched simple text with the Dreamweapon for some retro text treatments.
BACKGROUNDS
Part of the brand assets included gradient backgrounds for each piece of packaging; I warped one in Premiere, then used the Dreamweapon to create glitched colour palettes for each flavour.
TV FEED
The second video expands on the channel surfing concept; this time depicting a live camera feed. Cameras snoop on citizens as they enjoy the sunset, navigate the city and dance the night away.
