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The Brief
The brief to BR&Me was to convey coldness and taste even when packs are not situated in chiller cabinets. The pack design needed to look cold, but Foster’s were adamant that this shouldn’t mean resorting to generic or clichéd ice imagery. They were also worried that the brand’s signature deep blue colour – the way that most customers identified the Foster’s product – would be sacrificed if a visual sense of coldness was applied to the packaging.
The Design
Before the re-design, Foster’s had three fundamental branding rules for its packaging: that the corporate blue should dominate, that ‘Foster’s’ was always written in two vertical columns and that the round Foster’s logo was used as the main way of identifying the brand. BR&Me challenged all three of these rules. The resulting design retains the deep blue at the base of the pack only and places the Foster’s brand name in a new horizontal position. This frees up the rest of the pack for dramatic frozen waterfall imagery, instantly communicating coldness and a pack-shot, which has the added benefit of allowing customers to quickly differentiate whether the multipack holds bottles or cans.
The Results
Foster’s is now the fastest growing mainstream lager in multiple grocers, with 36.4% volume growth in a market growing by 11.8%. The brand now enjoys a 29% market share, up from 23.7%, a remarkable achievement for an established brand. Foster’s has now overtaken its competitors in purchase intention and shoppers can find the packs they want 20% faster than Carling equivalents. The packaging has also achieved its best in class objective, with 70% of surveyed customers naming the Foster’s multipack as the most modern and up to date brand and 64% associating the brand with coldness.
Judges’ Comments
‘Amazing…’, ‘Brave…’ and ‘A staggering case…’ were just a few of the judges’ comments on this entrant.
‘As clear an example of design effectiveness as you could ever hope to see,’ was the unequivocal verdict by lead judge Andrew Woodward, Marketing Director at John Lewis, adding that, ‘in the absence of any other contributing factors at all, the financial results were simply outstanding’. Richard Masters, Director of Sales & Marketing, FA Premier League, commented that he had ‘never seen such a concrete case that says that changing the packaging design can produce such results. It’s awesome.’
‘This is about business performance directly resulting from design,’ concluded the judges, making Foster’s a worthy winner of the Grand Prix.
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