Beverage brands should dial down their focus on existing consumer trends when embarking on rebranding, according to an article in this month’s Global Drinks Intel magazine.
Writing in the July/August issue, Chris Tyas, the chief strategy officer at creative agency Impero, considers the dangers of targeting the trends of today to achieve sales success tomorrow. Tyas cites the rebrand exercises by Nestle Waters for San Pellegrino and PepsiCo for Tropicana as having fallen into the trap in recent years.
“There is a great danger when deciding to focus on category drivers [for rebrands],” Tyas warns. “You end up picking the most dominant drivers rather than the emerging ones.
“Most rebrands take around nine to 18 months from research to hitting the shelves. If you only focus on the most dominant drivers at the research stage, you run the risk that your brand will lag behind the market momentum by the time it hits the shelves.”
Nestle Waters rolled out new packaging for flavoured sparkling water San Pellegrino late last year, removing its foil covering and highlighting Italian provenance through the presence of a map on the front of the can. The revamp drew criticism on LinkedIn from several marketing executives.
The latest issue of Global Drinks Intel magazine has been published this month. For details on how to subscribe to Global Drinks Intel, click here.
