Finger on the pulse

Touch Packaging Innovation’s creative director James Pryor discusses the redesign of Lucozade Sport with Packaging Today.

At first glance the brief from Lucozade Sport, the UKs number one sport drink brand¹ owned by Lucozade Ribena Suntory (LRS), to redesign their bottle appeared straightforward. However, meeting changing consumer requirements, redefining brand identity and achieving company sustainability targets was a hard goal to achieve.

Extensive research was carried out by Lucozade Sport into what the consumers wanted from a sports bottle.

The new bottle needed to meet key usage and performance needs across a wide range of sports activities. Most importantly it had to take a major step away from the multitude of ‘me too’ sports drink brands and private label offerings, whilst achieving lightweighting requirements and seamlessly integrating with the existing production line for LRS. The result is that Lucozade Sport has met all of these requirements and created a revolutionary bottle in the process.

The Foundation

Lucozade Sport’s deep dive into their target consumer’s conscious and unconscious relationship with the bottle uncovered insights that set the foundation for our design team. Touch were then able to establish four opportunity platforms for creative and technical development that were to become the core of the redesign brief: visibility, perfect form, controlled delivery and intuitive access.

Lifecycle

Understanding the consumers’ interactions with a sports drink was only one part of the narrative. Touch considered each and every aspect of the bottle’s entire lifecycle, from how a consumer holds it to the need to work in vending machines.

Balancing act

Every element identified within this lifecycle had to be balanced with the requirements of the production process, secure transportation and above all health and safety.

Sifting through all these elements enabled Touch to define three key areas we needed to focus on. From the consumer’s perspective we needed to reduce the overall bottle weight, increase its strength and improve the grip. These areas overlapped with the brand requirement to stand-out. But what Touch managed to achieve, as well as delivering on the fundamentals, was the other part of the brief, to meet the sustainability needs of LRS and improve the carbon footprint of the product by light-weighting, without compromising on performance.

More with less

Light-weighting the bottle threw up a fresh set of challenges. Reducing the weight and rigidity of plastic bottles can create impacts in performance both on the shelf and throughout the supply chain.

As with many bottles, Lucozade Sport is gas flushed to protect the product. This increases the pressure inside the bottle, which can distort lighter weight bottles. The challenge was to create a better performing bottle that was lighter, using less plastic, that survived the physical forces encountered during filling and transportation.

To achieve the exacting balance required, Touch carried out a factory audit to highlight the technical constraints we were working with as well as to identify areas where we could propose beneficial changes. This was followed by a technology trawl, to explore processes and materials and push packaging technologies to their limit with the help of innovative suppliers. A fundamental part of the process in so many of Touch’s packaging Innovations.

Touch carefully calculated the exact profile required to ensure an increased radial strength throughout the entire bottle and gave the bottle an ergonomic waist that further delivered grip as well as on-shelf standout.

The result is a bottle that is both stronger and lighter by 3g, and has driven purchase intent up by 10%.

Working in close partnership with Lucozade Sport’s marketing team as well as their technical team gave Touch the opportunity to resolve both the consumer need, the business challenge and the brand differentiator.

The bottles visual identity is grounded in the grip pattern played across the bottle’s surface. Simultaneously creating a unique functional slip-free texture, and strengthening the bottle whilst creating unique visual appeal with the interplay between the graphics and structure.

From Touch’s perspective, one of the most powerful take outs of the entire project was the way in which people with real passion, worked seamlessly together. The new bottle works well on so many levels, improving usage experience, brand impact, and delivery for the consumer, whilst also improving the delivery for the LRS business.

The end product is a transformational design that LRS will have in the market place for many years to come and is a testament to what can be achieved with insight, rigor and the expertise to use these to great effect.

¹IRI source is 52 w/e 26/06/16