Giving the soft drink Juice Burst a fresh look was only one part of the rebranding exercise. A key issue was to incorporate the very latest smartphone technology – that and exploding fruit, discovers Philip Chadwick
The brief Juice Burst has been growing in the independent retail sector. New packaging was sought to communicate the benefits of the brand and engage with its core market – 18-24 year olds
Client Purity Soft Drinks
Brand Juice Burst
Design Williams Murray Hamm
UK launch date February 2013
There are 19.2m smartphone users in the UK and by 2016, according to eMarketer, that figure could rise to a staggering 41.9m. It’s no surprise that brands are now looking at ways to tap into this new use of the mobile phone and all the signs are that packaging has a major role to play.
One approach has been to stick ugly-looking QR codes onto packs – scan that into your phone and usually you’re taken through to a website with more information on the brand. For Purity Soft Drinks’ brand Juice Burst, something a bit more engaging was needed on its new packaging and, thanks to augmented reality, it has created what it believes is a game-changer in the soft drinks category.
Juice Burst has been around since 2001 and is found in independent retailers where, according to a Parthenon survey last year, it’s the third most popular juice brand behind Tropicana and Ribena. There are 14 variants from orange through to pomegranate. New flavours for 2013 include orange and passion fruit, still lemonade and apple and rhubarb. A revamp was needed to fully engage with consumers. “It’s about on the go goodness,” explains Jon Evans, marketing director at Purity Soft Drinks.
Garrick Hamm, creative director at design agency Williams Murray Hamm (WMH) which created the new brand concept plus the graphic and structural packaging, adds: “The idea needed to be based on a truth. It’s not about decorating the packaging for the sake of it.”
In such a fiercely competitive market the product needed to stand out. With that in mind the brand went down the augmented reality route and turned to Blippar’s technology. “It’s something our core target audience, 18-24 year olds, know all about and use frequently via their smart phones,” explains Evans.
While the photography on the label is incredibly detailed there’s more to the image than meets the eye. All you need is a smartphone.
Exploding fruit
The consumer’s device reads the the on-label image – this effectively replaces the need for a QR code. The smartphone processes the image and takes the user through to a video of the fruit itself exploding. From there, the user can go to a short ‘making of’ video and link to the brand’s Facebook page.
“We are trying to give the consumer a bit more information and add some fun,” adds WMH’s Hamm. “The technology is magical in the way it traces the label – it’s quite fantastic.”
The labels, printed by Berkshire Labels, wrap around the bottle and Blippar had to write some additional code so a smartphone can trace the entire image. Purity’s Evans explains that the shape of the bottle is bespoke and designed to be easier to hold. In addition, the label has been moved further up the bottle to give it a greater standout on shelf.
The exploding fruit was created by Artem, the special effects company behind the opening ceremony scenes at the London 2012 Olympics. “It looks more fun in the video than it was on the first day,” says Hamm. “The problem is that you can’t predict how an explosion will exit an apple.”
It’s also too early to predict how the new look Juice Burst will impact on sales but Hamm believes that augmented reality campaigns are the future for other brands and not just in a select age bracket.
“It is a young technology but you need to have assets to show. If you don’t have the content then it [augmented reality] will not work. You also need to have a brand that has a certain amount of money,” he says.
Juice Burst is now in-store and if the forecasts are correct and a sizable chunk of the population will have smartphones in the years to come, then it has stolen a march on its soft drinks rivals.
