Few brands carry as strong a legacy as Lucky Strike. Created in the nineteenth century and recognized worldwide for its iconic red circle, the brand has always represented authenticity, attitude and culture. In the early 2000s, British American Tobacco (BAT) launched one of its largest global brand repositioning movements, seeking to bring Lucky Strike closer to a new generation of consumers without losing the strength built over more than a century.
It was in this context that the G2 Brasil team—later incorporated into Geometry Global, one of the world's largest brand activation and shopper marketing networks in the WPP group—assembled more than thirty professionals from various disciplines to develop a strategic innovation program for Lucky Strike. Over more than a year, designers, strategists, shopper marketing specialists, production experts, branding professionals, packaging designers, brand experience specialists and communications experts worked in an integrated manner to build a creative platform that would later influence the brand's international initiatives.
As Creative Director, Sandro Bianco participated in leading this creative process, helping transform strategic concepts into tangible brand experiences, exploring new forms of interaction between consumer, packaging and point of sale.
The challenge was especially complex. Unlike other consumer categories, communication for tobacco products was already extremely limited by strict legislation in various markets. This meant that virtually the entire brand experience needed to happen through the packaging itself, point-of-sale materials and special activations capable of strengthening brand perception without relying on traditional advertising.
Instead of developing only new packages, the team began investigating how Lucky Strike could expand its cultural presence through special collections, limited editions, premium experiences and collectible objects. The project explored different creative territories inspired by the brand's own history, reinterpreting historical moments, military references, noble materials, special finishes and commemorative editions capable of transforming each package into a coveted object.
Beyond collectible packaging, the program also developed a series of concepts for retail communication and shopper marketing. The Original Smoke campaign transformed urban environments into large visual extensions of the Lucky Strike identity, using high-impact typography, industrial elements, metallic textures, wood, concrete and graphic language inspired by urban culture to reinforce attributes such as authenticity, potency and tradition. The pieces created a consistent visual system that allowed the brand to maintain high presence even in an extremely restrictive regulatory environment.
Another important axis of the project consisted of investigating new structural formats for packaging. Various concepts were developed using rigid cases, special wooden boxes, differentiated finishes and mechanical solutions that elevated the brand's perceived value and expanded the product opening experience, bringing Lucky Strike closer to the universe of premium and collectible products.
More than developing isolated pieces, the project established a creative platform capable of feeding local and international initiatives in the years to follow. The integration between branding, structural design, packaging, shopper marketing and brand activation demonstrated how design systems can strengthen global brands even in highly regulated markets.
For Sandro Bianco, this project represents an important moment in his international trajectory. Working on one of BAT's largest global accounts meant collaborating daily with multidisciplinary teams, international processes and one of the market's most sophisticated creative structures, consolidating an approach to strategic design based on complex systems, collaboration between specialists and global brand vision.
Today, looking at this work, it is evident a characteristic present in several projects developed by SB\Design: the ability to transform extremely complex challenges into coherent, scalable branding solutions prepared to operate in different markets, cultures and regulatory contexts.
