4.1.2 Marketing products
Coasters are a traditional and effective form of marketing because they leave a lasting impression. The average consumers consume 2.3 beverages per visit and will lift their drink and average of 9 times which can deliver 186.3 Impressions.
(KATZ Americas 2018.) Beer glasses with the logo of the brewery gives a closer relationship between the consumer and the product and creates a loyalty to the brand (Stead, Angus, Macdonald, Bauld 2014.)
Marketing examples
An advertisement by Heineken has been heavily criticised for the possibility of being racist. Heineken has since then removed the advertisement. The ad con-sisted of a bottle of light beer passing by three people of colour and stopped at a white person with the slogan: “sometimes, lighter is better”. On social media it is speculated that companies are bringing out racist advertising on purpose with the reason to attract more attention. However, Heineken stated that that was not the case (The Guardian 2018.) Heineken is trying to include a more diverse group of people who like to enjoy a beer but do not want to drink alcohol. They are ad-vantage of the culture where newer generations want to consume less alcohol, by promoting their 0,0 per cent alcohol beer (McCarthy 2020.)
In marketing it is commonly said that bad publicity is still good publicity. Corona beer has experienced the effect of COVID-19 or coronavirus. In late January early February of 2020, Google trends shows a spike for searches related to the coro-navirus and Corona beer (Picture 11, Saini 2020.) Corona fell subject to memes and online videos because of the virus. According to YouGov, the shares of the beer took an 8 per cent dive. Although, it is speculated that this could have been the cause of COVID-19, it is possible that the decline in sales and purchase intent is related to Corona being a summer beer and consumers buy it less during the winter period (Kotoky 2020.) The decline in purchase intent seems to be more of
an issue in English speaking countries whereas Latin speaking countries, where the word corona is more commonly used, does not influence the sales (Bajic 2020.)
PICTURE 11. Google Trends for corona beer virus (Leo Saini 2020)
5 PROJECT
This project will showcase the development of a brand within beer labels and marketing. It consists of a concept and a mock-up of both branding and packaging with prototypes where applicable. The beer is not an existing physical product with a recipe but rather an idea that develops into branding to put theory into practice and to utilize my visual design skills and research I have done for this thesis.
Initial Idea
Before going into designing anything I tried to get into contact with someone work-ing in a brewery to collaborate on designwork-ing a beer label for an existwork-ing beer.
Unfortunately, that was not possible because of the contact no longer working in a brewery and communication was challenging in the time frame I was working on the project. Therefore, I had to come up with a beer that does not exist. The overall concept is to have a brand that tells a story. The brand of the brewery would be a character that goes on an adventure, and the adventures are the beer.
The beer label would have its own brand identity standing alone from the brewery brand.
Branding
The brand of the brewery is inspired by illustrations of frogs and nature. The frog is mischievous, playful, and curious about the world. I started out with creating a mood board (picture 12) to create a general feeling that I am looking for. I mainly went for colours that are muted earth tones because I wanted the brand to be natured based as the background would be to return to nature while also playing on nostalgia. Following the mood board, I made some sketches in both traditional (picture 13) and digital media (picture 14.) I drew the digital sketch using Adobe Photoshop. These helped me to have a decent foundation to build the logo on.
PICTURE 12. Mood board
PICTURE 13. Sketched ideas and inspiration
PICTURE 14. Digital sketch
Translating the sketch into a vector logo was a bit difficult and I had to redo the logo many times. I ended up going from many mushrooms and grass to less de-tails (picture 15, picture 16.) In the end I decided that less detail would look better in the end if the logo would not be very big on a label. The vector was made in Adobe Illustrator using mainly the pen tool. In the end I am content with how the logo turned out. I did not go for the colours seen in picture 18, in the label as they would not fit the theme that I wanted to go for. However, this version is appealing to make merchandise out of.
PICTURE 15. Frog logo version 1
PICTURE 16. Frog logo changes
PICTURE 17. Frog logo with fonts and some colour test
PICTURE 18. Frog logo colour options
Label
The first adventure the frog goes on is into ‘Grandma’s Cottage’. The flavour of the beer is a cherry beer with vanilla, inspired by the cherry pie from Limburg.
The colours used are mainly red to represent the colour of the berry and the sweetness of the beer if the beer would be real. The background represents either a kitchen towel or picnic blanket where the cherry pie is cooling down after coming out fresh from the oven.
PICTURE 19. Label Colour palette
PICTURE 20. First label shape
PICTURE 21. Label with pie
The first version of the label would have had a diamond shape to represent the kitchen towel more. After experimenting with the design and the positioning of all the assets, it did not work out. The pie seemed to disappear into the bottom while I wanted it to have a more important role in the label. Having it more centre made more sense in my eye (picture 22.) I made the pie look brighter as well to be more eye catching and more appetizing, although the darker version looks more real-istic.
PICTURE 22. Label, second version
PICTURE 23. Final version
After dropping the diamond shape, I decided on having the label wrap around the bottle. In picture 22 I realised that there would not be enough space for all the possible information. In the final version (picture 23) I put as much information as I could to make it realistic. I did add place holder text to the description since it would give an idea on how it would look like without me having to write anything, because I am not a trained copywriter. It still showcases what I want. As seen in the theory, the most important parts that should be mentioned on the label is the type of product, flavour, allergens in Finnish and Swedish, the volume, the alcohol percentage, batch number, place of origin, and expiration date. As I do not speak the Finnish nor the Swedish language, I wrote imaginary ingredients with place holder text. The address, expiration date, and batch number are made up. To add some realism, I wanted to place the pantti icon on the label. I was not able to find the requirements for it if there are any.
Bottle
Although aluminium cans are better for the environment, I made the choice to design my label for a bottle instead because it is more difficult to model a bottle in 3D and I wanted to challenge myself. If this were a real product, I would opt for cans instead. The label design could easily be transferred to a can.
PICTURE 24. Bottle 3D modelling
PICTURE 25. Bottle 3D material
PICTURE 26. Bottle cap model
I sculpted the bottle in Blender. To sculpt the bottle, I used a random picture from the internet for the reference. I tried my best to stay true to size but it is not perfect.
It took me two tried to create the bottle because the first time the shapes started to look very odd and using modifiers messed everything up while the second time it did not do that. I am not sure what I did different both those times.
PICTURE 27. Final version of bottle
For the final version of the bottle, I added the label by using a curve. This seemed the only simple way to add the label without having to UV-map, because that was too complicated for me. The curving did not add the label to the bottle perfectly, or at least I was not able to figure it out. For the look I was aiming for, it did not matter to me that the label does not fit a 100%. It still showcases what is neces-sary.
6 CONCLUSION
The goal for this thesis was to find what makes a brand effective and how it can stand out from its competitors and why branding and marketing is important in selling a product. The process of creating a brand and a label takes a lot of cre-ativity and planning and it is useful to have step by step guide telling the dos and don’ts. Unfortunately, it is not possible to have a one size fits all method of brand-ing.
Colours and shapes can affect the flavour of the product and purchase decisions, but it does not mean that as a designer it is mandatory to use specific assets in a design while not being allowed to use the other. Having all this research on the psychology of branding is a very useful tool to use as a basis, but that is it. It is still up to the designer to make something that looks aesthetically appealing and there can not be rules applied to that.
With the technology there is now there is a future for packaging that is better for the environment and that is something that is more interesting to take into con-sideration when designing.
There is a lot of freedom when it comes to designing, but there are rules and regulations that a designer needs to take into consideration. Not every country has the same set of rules and if a product will be sold outside of its homeland, the label needs to correspond with the laws of the other countries.
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APPENDICES
Appendix 1. Beer marketing example videos