This weeks focus is on the relaunch of Scrumpy Jack Cider. Jygsaw Brands (subsidiary of Scottish and Newcastle) gave JKR a brief to help emphasise the brand’s heritage. The old design, for your reference is here:

“We have returned to an earlier colour palette, reintroducing a lot of green to the can and steering it away from the creams that it has been using more recently,” says JKR chief executive Andy Knowles. “The new can also features an illustration that is intended to evoke the crack of leather on willow.”

In a further effort to push its heritage, the new can makes a feature of Scrumpy Jack’s relationship with brewers Hereford Symonds Cider Presses since 1727. 

In my opinion? Not a bad job! The colours create a fresh feel to the design which marries well with cold refeshing cider. The two glasses(?) look a bit like cider goggles though! Maybe this is a good thing!?

I feel the JKR have pushed the heritage cues as far as they can within the un-whimsical limitations of the product format, whilst retaining a quirky contemporary execution. 
 
Particularly like the intelligent use of cream to the top of the product and very clever use of negative space by the designer. The sliced apple core shape within the negative used for the window is very cool little nod to the visually astute. The effect is compounded by two strategically placed leaves as apple pips.

The new can rolls out to off-licenses and supermarkets from late June.

Co-RE-creation

At the recent Cello Conference on Creating Consumer Chemistry, Andrew Needham, Founding Partner of Face presented a paper on the practice of Co- Creation. It is a trend that could be relabeled “the rise of Pro-Ams” with amateur consumers helping out us professional marketers.

This made me think about the re-launch of Wispa and I wondered whether this could be called an example of co-RE-creation.

Via their blogs, chat and on-line communication, organised collaboration and subtle Guerrilla marketing (which included storming the stage at Glastonbury with a banner crying “Bring back Wispa!”) and the pledges of free assistance from cheerleaders, knights in armour, a barber shop quartet and a panda, the Great British public expressed their love of an 80s nostalgic brand and ‘forced’ Cadbury to bring back the brand.

‘Responding to four years of on-line hype from 93 ‘Bring Back Wispa’ Facebook groups and hundreds of similar blogging campaigns on MySpace and Bebo, Cadbury will produce around 23 million Wispa Classic limited edition bars. The chocolate will appear in its original blue wrapper, designed by Cadbury’s in-house design team V4′, wrote Design Week at the time.

Cadbury spokesman Tony Bilsborough explained ‘We have noticed the Web interest for some time and the consumer passion has undeniably swayed our opinion to re-launch the Wispa. This is the first time the Internet has played such an intrinsic role in the return of a Cadbury’s brand’ he adds.

For me however it represents another first – the first Co-RE-created brand!

Onto the design – the return of a bold classic but one that, for me, missed the opportunity to use the unique texture and name more distinctively.

Having said that, when Cadbury’s Wispa was back on the shelves with a nifty ‘Pro-am’ ad to boot, I for one was out there buying one or two. POWER TO THE PEOPLE !

The first in a regular series, thinking about branding from a design viewpoint – this time from our Senior Designer, Guy Chalkley.

This week’s design focus is on Packard Bell in an identity overhaul…

Packard Bell has launched a new identity, along with a new notebook range designed with Italian car design group Pininfarina.

The new identity, which features the initials ‘PB’ as well as Packard Bell’s full name, aims to help the computer company drive the branding towards the acronym PB over time. It has ditched purple for red, and now carries the tagline ‘Puredesire’.

The ‘red’ in the middle of ‘Puredesire’ is picked out in the appropriate colour, which is intended to communicate ‘passion and desire, as these are the driving elements behind the new brand and the new products’, according to a Packard Bell spokeswoman.

Overall I’m not sure about this. Nice lines yes, but I feel it belongs more to Fiat.

It would seem the car design influence has been a decisive factor in ‘driving’ the identity. Carving out their own niche should have been achieved by a brand this high profile.

It’s easy to criticise but apart from a beautiful graphic execution, the design seems to have no corner-stone of rationalisation from the what we’ve seen so far… just shiny and red don’t do it!