Botani
Where 400 Years of Papermaking Met a Brand-New Industry
The SERVICES
Naming · Brand Strategy · Visual Identity · Brand Film · Go-to-Market · Advertising · Trade Show
The TEAM
Produced in partnership with Hybrid Marketing Co.
Adam Mendez – Art Director
Aaron Rosenbluth – Content Director
Tyler Jacobson – Director of Marketing
Dan Curtis – Creative Producer
Johnathan McFarlane – Account Manager
INDUSTRY
B2B Cannabis / Specialty Materials
The STORY
SWM International is a papermaking pioneer with roots going back to 1545. They invented the rolling paper category through their JOB brand in 1872 and have supplied papers to some of the world’s largest tobacco companies for generations. As cannabis legalization expanded, they saw the opportunity clearly: take centuries of botanical paper expertise and point it directly at the cannabis B2B market. They needed a dedicated brand to do it, and they ran a three-round RFP to find the right agency. We won.
The Challenge
The whole brief lived in one tension: heritage versus innovation. The brand had to earn credibility in a young, fast-moving industry while honoring the 400-plus years of legacy that made SWM credible in the first place. Lean too far toward heritage and it feels like a relic. Lean too far toward the new industry and you throw away the single most valuable asset the company has. The answer had to hold both at once.
MY CONTRIBUTION
I led the naming, brand strategy, and creative direction from the RFP through go-to-market. Given the caliber of the client, I brought in an outside art director to work alongside our in-house art director, both under my direction. Scaling the craft to the client rather than the ego is part of the job, and this legacy deserved that level of attention.
The Work
The name had to bridge a 400-year industrial heritage and a young, expressive industry, and Botani does exactly that. It borrows from the root of botanical, evoking the ancient art of botanical formulation while connecting straight to the product: botanical papers, wrappers, and fillers. It positions the company as students of natural materials, not just manufacturers of them. We also tracked down the .com and facilitated the private acquisition of botani.com for $10,000.
The identity resolves the heritage-versus-innovation tension on purpose. The mark is a clean, mono-line illustration, modern and versatile, with wavy lines that invoke movement, water, and the transformation of raw material, flowing into a leaf form that represents the botanical elements of papermaking. It communicates process and craft rather than a product on a shelf. The wordmark uses bold, supporting serif typography, with a custom crossbar on the B whose angles connect back to the leaf lines in the mark, so the two pieces feel like one. The tagline, Where Tradition Meets Innovation, says the strategy out loud.
We brought it to market with a short documentary-style brand film connecting SWM’s centuries of expertise to the cannabis industry’s future, then activated through print and digital advertising, sponsored email outreach, and a trade show booth.
The Results
SWM was highly satisfied, and Botani launched into real market success, establishing itself in the B2B cannabis supply chain. The truest test came after launch. SWM was acquired by Mativ, the engineered papers business was later sold and relaunched as an independent SWM International, and through all of that corporate change Botani kept operating and growing under the identity we created. Most brands do not survive being sold twice. Botani did, under the identity we built. That is the only durability test that counts.
Won via competitive 3-round RFP
Heritage bridged – 1545 to the modern cannabis market
Durability – still operating and growing through multiple acquisitions
