Drinks Branding – Complete Overview
Drinks branding is what you need to set your brand apart, make it really exclusive and unforgettable as well as entirely change the way people see it. For the reason of highlighting the most crucial points of this revamp, we prepared this brief with essentials that will help you have a clear understanding of it.
Exploring the topic of beverage branding, our reviewer directed attention to significant elements that make carrying out originating successful, specified the methods of leveraging social media, touched upon the techniques individualising specialists implement to elevate brands and portrayed a few remarkable examples to assess.
Find out what actions need to be taken while conducting drink branding from our overview to bring your brand to prosperity and harness your business potential!
What is drinks branding?
Understanding the target audience, identifying the unique selling proposition, designing appealing visuals and voicing the values of your beverage, in addition to implementing innovations and forming unified brand persona through different platforms are activities done within branding for drinks.
Undertaking individualisation of your drinks can be a significant part of forming the image of your brand with the meaning of making every particle of your brand consistent – from your offerings to your office. Or you can apply only for those services that are needed for spotlighting your products.
Differentiation, which is one of the aims of drink branding, helps deliver the products you offer to the exact people who would buy them even without loud promotion and lay the foundation of the reputation that might be in the title of an innovator with new flavours, protectors with the packaging that doesn’t rubbish the planet or rebellions with the bold visuals and statements.
Key elements of effective beverage branding
Talking about thinking over all the details, businesses can’t neglect even a tiny point as colour or font since together, the selection of components we outlined further in our brief, transform how people perceive your brand. Let’s study the elements closer:
Carefully thought-out strategy
Before diving headfirst into design, the market has to be examined attentively. The concept of revamp should be carried out depending on the preferences of your target audience and their comfort and behaviour, so that’s where strategic drinks branding services such as brand audit, positioning and market research must be completed.
Observation to consider: There are plenty of particulars that are good to give a thought to as aligning long-lasting trends, responsible attitude towards nature and community as well as emotional branding that is on its height. Your brand is far beyond name and images but something that can evoke feelings. Use strategic opportunities on its full to establish a consistent brand.
The right material
Choosing what your drinks will be packed in is as essential as designing. Your product branding must be appealing, be in line with the overall strategy and consistent. Counting on your offerings to be opulent and distinctive, make sure that the tare corresponds to this image. Or, showing devotion to sustainability and ecology, ascertain that you use maximum possible recyclable containers.
Observation to consider: Think whether your bottles are convenient in use. The drinks, offered in bottles in the shape of a ball or with a cap that can’t be put back after opening, definitely look good, but it’s important to know whether your customers will really go for it or they buy your products in the move and want to put the bottles in their bags without a fear of it to be split.
Well-designed packaging
That’s a miracle what experienced beverage branding experts are capable of doing when they have strategic insights and the understanding of the audience. To ensure that your drink or food packaging branding is unified, they design logos, visual components, choose fonts and colour palettes.
Observation to consider: If your design isn’t taken as seriously as it should be, even the best possible composition won’t elevate your brand since a lot of people will just bypass your offerings heading towards those that were approached more thoughtfully. Make your packaging reflect the main idea you put in your products so customers will quickly comprehend that they see something they were looking for.
Captivating messaging
Don’t underestimate the meaning of the verbal part of branding since it’s the most effective way to communicate with your customers in the shops where your products are sold. The values that can’t be showcased with the visuals can be turned into short phrases that remain in the memory of your customers.
Observation to consider: Highlighting the quality, leaving a joke or a mark about recycling, selecting suitable naming and information about components and nutrients – the choice is wide. The clue is – present all the value and, of course, being short.
Extensive online presence
Establishment of web persona in order to craft beverage branding that is extensive requires a thorough grasp of your audience. All the companies, summarised as notable examples you’ll see below, have websites where their offerings are described in the best way possible.
Observation to consider: Ascertain that your products are present on the platform your target audience is. Maybe, Tik Tok is a great instrument for reaching your customers or Instagram gives you better performance indicators. Being fully cut from social media is not a winning game if you want your products to be memorable since all people are now on the Internet and it’s wise to be where your customers are.
Leveraging social media for drink branding
We’ve already stated a few lines of the importance of web presence for a drink revamp, yet there is still a plethora of things that can be done to take a full advantage of your digital strategy that we explored in our review:
| Set upright your brand | |
| Influence: A good story is worth creation and can change the way people view your brand. Thanks to a good Christmas story advertising the taste of Coca-Cola is associated with celebration and a good drink/drinks branding can help come up with something entertaining and noteworthy. | |
| Lifestyle storytelling example: Through bright photos, articles, videos, posted in different social media platforms Red Bull enhances its visibility and provides high-quality content that is difficult to consider as advertising since it is as entertaining as original content. More than 2 million people subscribed to their channel. | Heritage storytelling example: Even after Guiness became a part of Diageo, its rich story that started in the 18th century in Ireland remains an essential part of its promotion, differentiating the drink in the market. The brand has a few official pages on Instagram, intended for different countries. |
| Reach out to ambassadors | |
| Influence: Because of Zendaya promoting SmartWater, Eva Longoria – Pepsi, these brands won’t fade away and be relevant no matter the time, since these celebrities have fans who follow them. However, it’s not necessary to hire a star with the price of services that is too heavy, since ambassadors can be not only world-known stars. | |
| Nano-influencers example: A huge deal of brands prefer hiring bloggers with a small but loyal audience whose advice doesn’t look like an advertisement. | Employees example: Who knows your products better than your employees? Brands like Srarbucks, Diageo and PepsiCo motivate their employees to share moments that enhance brands’ reputation and visibility. |
| Participate in challenges that are on and trends | |
| Influence: Funny posts that shove people brands paying attention to the problems, supporting initiatives or even being a part of short trends themselves become instruments that spread awareness. Especially if you need sports drink branding, since people who like them are fond of an active rhythm of life and are usually eager to take part in different kinds of activities. Statistics say that in the next 5 years the consumption of this kind of drink will only increase. | |
| Challenges examples: Once Chipotle organised a dancing challenge that was launched on TikTok and gained the attention of millions of people worldwide that helped the brand reach incredible awareness. Regarding a bigger picture, all brands with a big audience look for funny ways to remind them about themselves. | Trend example: Depending on your brand strategy, there are always a few trends you can follow and share your opinion on social media. Now, they are revolving around good storytelling and sustainability. After scrolling some pages of well-known brands, you’ll definitely find something related to those topics. |
| Build better engagement between you and your audience | |
| Influence: Through social media platforms you can reach your audience faster and show your responsiveness. It can vary from publishing pulls to experimenting with the flavours they voted for in order to express your openness and closeness to your audience. | |
| Contest example: Prime Hydration enthrals their audiences through interactive content such as quiz or contests where people engaging are provided with an opportunity to win some of their products, sometimes including limited versions. | Making a move example: Drinks brands are able to offer a wide range of activities that will enhance people’s interactions with them. The most popular one – publishing recipes that include their products so customers could prepare tasty beverages and learn something new. |
4 tips from drinks branding specialists to elevate brand
To knock the key elements and social media efforts together, we offer you to get acquainted with the tips from experts that will help you significate your brand, such as:
Tip 1. Personalisation reaches far
The limits of customisation available for drink can be set only by your desire related to its extent. A bunch of brands have been implementing various features to grant their customers the feeling of exclusivity. From the name on the cans to digital strategies like collecting recommendations based on people’s preferences and programs that are active for your loyal customers.
Providing your customers special treatment will work in any case – whether you apply for restaurant branding or want to give a boost to your drinks. What’s important is that if you really want to make a difference, it’s better not to postpone, since it takes time for revamp to provide a reward in its full capacity.
Tip 2. Set experiential into motion
Since an effective brand is something that bypasses visuals and verbal identities, but the entire chain of the engagement with a product, it’s advised to pay special attention to your customers’ experience. A well-versed drink branding expert is capable of preparing an unusual demonstration of your products, launching events, taking care of digital representation and figuring out the keys that will enhance the on-store experience of shopping.
Yet, try to not overdo this, because complexity of an offer can be difficult to manage as it’s with Starbucks‘ variety of proposals.
Tip 3. Employ market insights
The process of designing isn’t the all matter. Looking for specialists who will help you to deal with this demanding creative task or coping with it by yourself, you’ll get appealing images, but it’s crucial for them to be well-suited to the industry and be captivating for your customers. Trying to blaze a trail to different categories of customers, study what they have in common and how it should be applied to your proposition.
Knowing your audience, it will be much easier not only to design packaging or come up with good taglines, but to carry out future tasks, look for ways that will spread awareness and bring more loyal customers to your brand.
Tip 4. Ensure your transparency
Reputation it’s something that is difficult in building and is easy in ruining, so if you want to complete prime drink branding, think of what you could do to earn your customers trust and hold it. Being honest and transparent, improving your brand, looking for new solutions that will make your products better in the eyes of buyers are the means that will benefit your business, with the long-lasting effect.
Opposed to transparency, businesses that have dirtied themselves in unpleasant situations will always have the trails that will affect their customers’ loyalty.
Successful examples of branding for drinks
Explore some remarkable and distinguished cases of beverage overhaul that shaped fascinating outcomes in the form of the great devotion and loyalty to brands, not only in the places they were produced but far abroad.
Monster
What the producers of this drink offer their clients go far beyond just a drink that will make them a bit more active, but “unleash dark energy”. Their energy drink branding is a bright and rich collection of techniques that stick to the memory of customers. First detail worth noting is their designs that no matter where you see the drinks, it’s impossible for them to be outshined by anything else.
Leaving out imagery, Monster effectively uses words to convey the major message and establish its positioning. Since this drink is famous in different countries, the company hires ambassadors for their programs in the countries they sell their products to integrate Monster within the local culture and pays attention to sport and drive events to promote their offerings to the target audience.
Coca-Cola
We couldn’t help but mention this brand in our summary, as a solo product and a multinational corporation that has spread its influence over the world. The individualising strategies the brand has implemented are wide, starting from a notable packaging wrapping thanks to the combination of colours and fonts and proceeding to engaging campaigns such as that when customers could find drinks with their names on the packaging.
Throughout the years, this best beverage branding example is remarkable in the matter of its popularity amongst buyers, revenue and the scale in which the brand operates. The company took care about every aspect of the brand, having obtained all kinds of branding like packaging, identity, audio and digital, exploring every avenue of what could make a difference.
Fentimans
Creators of these British drinks give special thought to their customers’ experience. On their website they provide a guide on how to pair their soft drinks and tonics with alcohol to achieve the best taste. For example, choosing Havana Club Rum you get two suitable choices – Curiosity Cola and Ginger Beer. Fentimans hire influencers and celebrities to be their ambassadors and promote their products.
Without any doubts, the most appealing in their originative strategy is their packaging. The form of bottles as well as wrapping evoke the sense of nostalgia. Yet, when it comes to the beverage itself, the company emphasises its unique way of botanic brewing with the attentive choice of material sources, that include three secret ingredients.
Innocent Drinks
As it stated on their bottles, Innocent “gives you some oomph”. Evaluating its organic beverage branding, we can’t bypass the way they magnificently use verbal tricks to grab attention, become memorable and win hearts both on packaging and their website. Apart from cool messages, the design and shape of the bottle make the juices be eye-catching when standing on the shelves.
The company takes care of their social media, posting their news and humorous remarks that help build emotional ties with the brand. Additionally, they promote sustainability, using packaging that is mostly recyclable and have an active initiative about controlling where it goes after finishing the product, launching campaigns, in an attempt to be a company that changes the world.
Conclusion
Evaluating the notable cases we provided in our synopsis, analysing tips and the means social media platforms can enhance your brand recognition and awareness, you might have gathered some inspiration for your beverage revamp as for your company or a solo branding.
As you can see from the string that went through all the passages here, the meaning of the suitable packaging is impossible to overvaluate even if you make it as minimalistic as it may be. To give you a clue of the prices for carrying out packaging design, we can’t help but offer you our project calculator, so you could count the budget needed.
