CASE STUDY — Product Brand
Passion project
Brand identity
Messaging
Landing page
A growing nonprofit came to us with a passionate community, a flagship annual rodeo, and a lot of moving pieces. Together, we built a clearer brand foundation and digital presence.
NOTE
This is a speculative passion project. RIP-ITS™ current branding and website are not designed or maintained by Common Thread. Product photography courtesy of Nina at rip-its.com. All other creative work displayed with the founder's permission.
We found her on TikTok. We believed in it. We built it anyway.
Molly was scrolling TikTok when she came across Nina and RIP-ITS™, a simple, brilliant product with a real origin story and a founder who believed in it deeply. We did a little research. We liked what we found. So we reached out, offered to build a full brand and landing page concept on our own time, and gave ourselves 72 hours to do it.
Nina didn't end up moving forward with our direction. The timing wasn't right and she likes doing things her way (which we completely respect). But she gave us her blessing to show the work. So here is our honest take on what RIP-ITS™ could look like if the strategy leaned into where we think the biggest growth opportunity lives.
THE SITUATION
RIP-ITS™ was born from anxiety we can all relate to.
Nina created RIP-ITS™ as a tamper-evident drink seal, a response to genuine food-handling anxiety, drink spiking concerns, and the chaos of delivery culture. The product works. The origin story is authentic. And the use cases are genuinely broad.
But broad can be hard to sell. When we looked at the current positioning, we saw a product leading with anxiety and fear (tamper protection, spiking prevention, safety), which is valid, but has a ceiling. Especially for B2B growth, where the real volume lives.
We saw a different angle.
WHAT WE FOUND
The real opportunity was in reframing the problem.
RIP-ITS™ is a tamper-evident, spill-resistant, and straw-compatible adhesive drink seal. It works on coffee cups, cocktail glasses, smoothie cups, whatever it may be, regardless of if it has a lid.
RIP-ITS™ doesn't just protect drinks. It liberates them.
Any drink can become a to-go drink when it's sealed. Which really isn't a safety feature, it's a lifestyle feature. And when you frame it like that, the audience expands dramatically. You're not just talking to people worried about tampering. You're talking to delivery drivers, venue owners, event coordinators, cafés, bars, and anyone who has ever handed a customer a drink and hoped for the best.
That reframe was the foundation of everything we built.
WHAT WE Built
A brand and landing page built around outcomes, not anxiety.
We kept Nina's origin story, because it's real and it matters, but we built around it rather than leading with it. Our speculative take repositioned RIP-ITS™ as a product born from delivery culture, with a playful, confident, lifestyle-forward identity designed to speak to business owners and everyday users all at the same time.
The Positioning Shift
We moved away from fear-based messaging and toward outcome-based messaging. The product's inherent benefits (tamper-evident sealing, lid-free security, spill resistance) stayed front and center. We just changed the emotional register from anxiety to confidence.
The we anchor we developed: "Made for drinks in motion."
Three Use Case Categories
Instead of listing features, we organized the landing page around three clear contexts that show customers exactly when and why they need RIP-ITS™:
Everyday: any drink becomes to-go when it's sealed. For the person who grabs coffee on the way to the car, the parent handing a drink to a kid in the backseat, the commuter who just needs things to stay put.
For Delivery: drinks weren't built for the back seat. For drivers and the restaurants and services that rely on them. This is where the product's origin lives, and we leaned into it.
For Venues: keep things covered, clean, and secure. For bars, events, festivals, and anywhere drinks move through crowds. This is where the B2B opportunity gets interesting.
Two Products, Scalable Pricing
We simplified the product architecture from bundle options to two core products with quantity-based pricing. The bigger the order, the better the rate. And bulk orders come with the option to add custom branding (something RIP-ITS™ doesn't currently offer, but that we believe could become a significant revenue channel). A café, a bar, a festival. All of them putting their brand on every drink that leaves their hands.
Brand Identity
A complete visual identity built around the new positioning. Playful, bold, and product-forward, with just enough personality to be memorable without tipping into gimmicky. The frog mascot Nina already had became something more ownable and distinctive, a brand character that could carry the lifestyle energy we were going for.
The Landing Page
One page. Fast. Built entirely in Wix (Nina's preferred platform) in 72 hours. Every section designed to get a visitor from "what is this" to "I need this" without ever making them think too hard.
WHAT WE proved
Speed doesn't mean shortcuts.
A complete brand system and a working website in three days.
We already knew we could work fast, but we wanted to prove we could move quickly without sacrificing intention. And we did. Every decision in this project was made deliberately, within constraints, in service of a clear goal.
The brand system is cohesive. The messaging is sharp. The landing page is designed to convert. And it was all built on a timeline most agencies would use just for the kickoff call.
A note from us
And a note about Nina.
Everything you've seen here is our speculative take. A hypothetical direction we believed in enough to build on our own time. Nina's actual brand, website, and direction are entirely her own, and we're proud to be in her corner regardless of whether she ever uses a single thing we made.
The product photography throughout this case study comes directly from Nina's website at rip-its.com. Go check it out, and while you're at it, go find her on TikTok. The product is real, the mission is genuine, and she is exactly the kind of founder Common Thread exists to cheer on from the sidelines.
