PHASE ONE: CAUSE A SCENE
How does an iconic California brand celebrate turning 40? By having a midlife crisis the week leading up to our birthday. Instead of hiding from middle age, we led CPK to stage its own midlife crisis. By framing their 40th like a high-fashion brand drop, CPK fully leaned in – loud, proud, and totally tongue-in-cheek. A fake rebrand rolled out across channels, reimagining CPK as a hyper-minimalist moody, techno eatery. that was completely “cheugy” as the kids like to say.
PHASE TWO: BUSY PHILIPPS TO THE RESCUE
After a week of sending our fans and the design community into a complete spiral, we pulled the plug on it, and brought in Actor and CPK super-fan Busy Philipps. Busy crashed the new look, saved us from ourselves and steered the brand back to its roots. What followed was a rallying cry to embrace who we are: California born, endlessly inventive, and known for food that is deliciously different since 1985… And proudly 40.
