The Challenge:
BUTTER, a multi-day fine art fair, is organized by GANGGANG—a cultural development and creative advocacy firm focused on centering beauty, culture, and equity within communities. Now in its fourth year, BUTTER takes place over Labor Day weekend in Indianapolis, showcasing the work of Black visual artists from Indiana and beyond.
GANGGANG first partnered with Tactive in 2022 to create custom boxes inspired by a classic stick of butter. Imagine that creamy yellow goodness wrapped in paper with blue lettering …three times the size of what you’d find in the grocery store. But in 2024, GANGGANG mixed things up with their promo boxes and moved from dairy into the breakfast aisle, pulling inspiration from classic cereal boxes.
They came to Tactive with a vision—of boxes that looked and felt like they belonged on the shelf between the Cheerios and Cocoa Puffs, complete with artwork that mimicked the muted colors of a cereal box, closure tabs, and heat-sealed polyethylene bags inside.
The Solution:
Team Tactive got to work to bring the vision to (real) life, starting with research about the ingredients that make up a standard cereal box. We learned that most cereal boxes are printed on “chipboard,” a paper-based product made from compressed pulp that’s sturdy enough to protect even the crunchiest cornflakes.
However, since cereal box printing isn’t our usual fare, sourcing chipboard would take several weeks—a challenge with GANGGANG’s tight timeline. Our solution? Pivot to a reliable in-house material: white cardstock. It’s versatile, readily available, and perfect for delivering that polished look.
With the green light from GANGGANG, Tactive printed the boxes on cardstock using our large-format printer, carefully folded each one into shape, and even supplied the plastic insert bags and heat sealer. The GANGGANG team then filled the boxes with branded shirts and personalized notes for the artists. A perfect recipe for a balanced breakfast… er, marketing campaign!
