Higher Yields - Ad Astra Cannabis Branding

HIGHER YIELDS CANNABIS CONSULTING

cannabis business consultants

story

Higher Yields Cannabis Consulting is an international consulting firm located in Denver Colorado .

Higher Yields was a cannabis business consulting startup when we first crossed paths. Today they are one of the fastest-growing vertically integrated consulting firms in the cannabis industry. In the early days, HYC was focused mainly on offering cultivation services however due to unforeseen opportunities they evolved into a one-stop-shop for anyone involved or looking to get into the cannabis business.

They pride themselves on their vertically integrated system which consists of four verticals: Startup, Facility Construction, Marketing & Branding, and Scaling Services.

The HYC brand was built over the course of approximately two years in phases starting with their visual identity. The owners realized in order to compete in their niche they had to create an organic and effective brand. A wise decision indeed.

our approach

Increase your yields

We focused the brand’s foundation on the staff themselves and the internal modular processes used to service clients.

The HYC story was built around the positive aspects that the staff convey. Their strengths were their knowledge and their organic approach to dealing with clients. As many know trust and integrity are highly valued in the cannabis industry and we wanted to convey the trustworthiness and the down-to-earth approach that relaxes many when they first enter into an intimidating and young industry.

As mentioned above the modular and scalable processes used internally at HYC was another facet we wanted to found the brand on. Not only is Higher Yields vertically integrated but they are able to scale their services for everyone from boutique owners to enterprise-level cannabis businesses.

1

Brand Strategy

2

Art Direction

3

Logo & Brand Identity

4

Podcast Production

5

Video Production

6

WordPress CMS

7

Brand & Event Marketing

8

SEO Services

the visual identity

Creating a brand from scratch has challenges

Our goal was to communicate who the HYC staff truly are—their expertise, what solutions as consultants they offer, and their organic approach. The biggest emotional connection was making users feel confident in trusting the experts at Higher Yields to do a good job as well as act ethically, this is the cannabis industry after all and it still has some bad vibes still surrounding it.

We started with a storyboard that mixed colors to reflect different feelings, as well as shapes and typefaces. This method allowed us to narrow down the styles the best fit the core values of the brand. That was the rationale for choosing colors, typography, patterns, and the logo.

colors

typeface

TITLE FONT - MONTserrat BOLD

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST UVWXYZ

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvw
xyz

1234567890

BODY FONT - MONTserrat regular

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST UVWXYZ

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvw
xyz

1234567890

logo & marks

website

To improve the site, we set up a new and more efficient web structure as well as a new site architecture, and improved navigation, allowing for the ability to access related content more effortlessly. After making these changes, traffic and user engagement has increased and the bounce rate has gone down.

In early 2019 we took over SEO duties, with a limited budget and resources we implemented the SEO in phases over the next year and a half. In the end it was one of our most successful SEO projects and also helped grow Higher Yields from single digit employees to over twenty employees.

In mid 2019 we also started producing videos and podcasts that were released to the public in March 2020, once again driving up unique visits to the site and driving down the bounce rate.

We built their web platform on WordPress, the most popular CMS in the world, so in-house employees and contractors alike could start to publish content and maintain the site in-house.

Our latest contribution to their website in 2020 was building a dynamic Real Estate system within their pre-existing site based on custom taxonomies and tagging.

marketing

videos

In early 2020 Higher Yields requested a YouTube channel as well as videos. We helped brand, edit, and produce their videos. HYC has a high need for standard promo videos as well as motion animated graphic based videos.

podcast

In early 2020 Higher Yields started their own podcast, the podcast centers around cannabis business consulting and is hosted by our very own, Paul Kolbach. Ad Astra was also responsible for producing the podcast, creative direction, as well as producing commercials for the podcast.