Many thanks to Sarah Wade, Account Director at Elmwood for this brand study, looking at the development of Sunny Delight.
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Watching BBC3’s ‘The Noughties, was that it?’ a while ago
made me ponder how easy it can be to forget the bad stuff in the face of great
reinvention. Look at Cheryl Cole, squeaky-clean goddess and all round nice gal
of talent show telly. Does anyone remember that she liked a good few beers and
a toilet punch up a few years back? Did she castigate herself forever more? No,
on some very smart PR advice she dumped the bad and built on the good and
voila, butter wouldn’t melt on a Saturday night. Whatever you might think of Ms
Cole, she’s done a fine job of transforming herself from being loathed to
loved.
Sunny Delight has had a chequered history, starting out with
stellar success within months of launch in 1998. It seemed that P&G, the
then owners had pulled off the impossible - to successfully launch a new brand.
The odds for any new brand are not good, even with a huge marketing budget to
support it – 9 out of every 10 brand innovations fail - fact.
Where P&G got it right is through a compelling mix of
product and storytelling to bring to life the idea of sunshine in a bottle.
What they hadn’t banked on was the overindulgence of some of their Sunny D fans
who drank so much of the stuff they began to turn orange, apparently caused by
the high levels of beta-carotene in the product. Life for the brand suddenly
became not so delightful.
This is where the difference comes between our friend Cheryl
and the nations most notorious soft drink – Sunny D just kept on and on
apologising for itself, even on its packaging, which undermined its
credibility, drained away any consumer trust that was left and acted as a
constant reminder to the poor publicity it had received. They publicly invited
mums to tell them what to do (AKA the Parents Advisory Group), splashing this
all over the pack – a clear signal that Sunny D wasn’t in control any more.
They adopted a tone of voice that was an attempt to befriend consumers and
demystify the ingredients which only kept the ‘orange children incident’ front
of mind. Add this to a poorly printed label depiction very unreal looking fruit
and the brand continued to slide for many years. Repeated references to past
mistakes are not the way to move forward for any brand so it became do or die
for Sunny D and clearly an evolutionary tweak was not going to be enough.
We live in an exceptionally brand literate society – we can
see through the hype, even the stuff we buy into, but our love for our
favourite brands makes us magnanimous in our forgiveness, up to a point. It’s
the love that facilitates the forgiveness but the product must also deliver, so
the task for Sunny D was twofold – sort the product out and bring back the
love.
Gillian McKeith, Jamie Oliver, et al have seen to it that we
know & care about what we eat – a changing food and drink market demanded a
healthier, more natural, less ‘colourful’ product from Sunny D, which has now
been duly delivered through significant investment.
The branding task was more complex. After so many years of
trying to please all the people all the time Sunny D had forgotten who it was.
In a world where only one brand can be the cheapest, who will you be? Well,
product functions and benefits are ownable for a short while until someone
comes up with a cheaper, faster way of doing it better. But the real equity is
in who you are – what you are, not what you can claim is what will make you
unique. Sunny D looked back to its roots in west coast surf culture to find its
true identity and brought this to life through a pack reinvention that focussed
on the positive aspects of the brand and new product formula. A new clear
bottle which clearly showed the product was developed and further investment in
the quality of print meant that fresher, better quality images of real fruit
could be used. The heart of the pack is a bright blue logo surfing under an
orange-slice sun bringing the sunshine freshness to life on the label and the
fruit reinforce the nothing artificial claims and act as strong flavour
indicators. It’s a pack that looks like its enjoying life and wants you to with
it. This new identity moves the brand from an artificial squash that’s cheated
its way into the chiller and feels guilty about it to a juice to be savoured
whilst surfing off the coast of the O.C.
If you want forgiveness then you have to prove you deserve
it by taking responsibility for your mistakes and then moving on. So far the
outlook for Sunny D is good – sales are up and confidence seems to be building.
At long last the love might be coming back. It’s a big ask to get your
consumers to trust you after such turbulent times but if it can work for
Cheryl…. Watch this space.
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