Innovating to reverse decline with an iconic beverage brand

STORY

An iconic Beverage brand was facing an existential threat to growth:  just 3% of its drinkers – mainly females over 55 – were driving 70% of sales in North America. Millennials were an untapped growth market but the Brand had difficulty appealing to this group who shifted away from “diet” drinks and artificial sweeteners.

The challenge was to reimagine the Brand to appeal to an entirely different generation of consumer, while retaining its sales with loyalist drinkers.

SOLUTION

Ogilvy Consulting provided an end-to-end innovation process to define the new consumer, product formulation, packaging and naming concepts, brand positioning, qualitative and quantitative research, and economic analysis (in partnership with brand design firm COLLINS and naming expert Lexicon).

We conducted consumer research, business forecasting, an innovation hackathon, and developed 7 new product concepts (with names, insights, positioning, formula recommendations, and packaging designs). We recommended a new Brand architecture, to demonstrate how the innovations  we recommenced would fit into a widened product portfolio.

The Brand relaunched in January 2018 with a new strategy based on one of the winning innovation concepts we developed.

Since the rebranding and product launch, Brand sales have surged, with millennials fueling the turnaround.

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