There is nothing new in creating a drinks brand from scratch. What is very different is inventing a completely new drinks category, which is what we had to do to resolve a particular problem for our client.
The founder of DRGN came to us with a fantastic idea - a premium soft drink with functional benefits, enjoyable any time of day. Its key ingredients could even potentially help alleviate some of the worst aspects of the morning after the night before. Using ingredients based on ancient Eastern wisdom, DRGN is a citrus based turmeric infusion with botanical extracts, vitamins and electrolytes. It helps rebalance the body after an intense workout or after a hard night’s partying, as the key ingredients are known to help support liver function, reduce fatigue and provide a natural rehydrating lift. And it’s just 80 calories a can!
The problem they faced was they couldn’t make certain health claims about the drink, even though - as soft drinks go - it was pretty healthy. On top of this, as one of the drink’s potential uses was people mixing their drink with alcohol, the drink’s marketing had to conform to alcohol advertising guidelines.
Once we fully understood the rationale behind the ingredients that go into every can we knew that what we were looking at was the world’s first ‘superdrink’, and that’s exactly how we branded DRGN.
As well as visual branding - a vision based around the effervescence of the drink itself to give a feeling of wellbeing - we created the can’s elegant packaging. The design was specifically developed to represent the quality of the drink’s ingredients and the promise of a great drinking experience, whether in the daytime grab-and-go market or an evening bar setting
To help launch the brand, we developed a roadmap for a 12-month communications strategy that covered how we presented the new drink to the On-trade and advertised it to drinkers willing to try a new type of mixer: The Smarter Mixer.
A few months down the line we are delighted to say that the soft drinks industry has embraced the idea of a superdrink, with DRGN nominated for Beverage Innovation awards and receiving accolades in the media.
