WakeWater is refreshing its look to get ready for a national rollout in Loblaw banners.
The caffeinated sparkling water brand, which positions itself as a healthy alternative to traditional energy drinks and coffee, based the new look on early consumer feedback it received as it looked to get ahead of the increasingly popular caffeinated water trend.
Scott Currie, WakeWater’s CEO, says that while it did meet with early success, the brand saw an opportunity build around consumer insights to make the beverage pop more at shelf. But there were initial concerns, Currie admits, were that it was difficult to properly identify the flavour when it added the lemon SKU to its portfolio, which also includes grapefruit.
The solution? Adding two colour strips, yellow for lemon, pink for grapefruit. These both appear mid-can and wrap across the top (see, above) to catch the eye of retailer and consumer alike.
This insight lead to an opportunity to go back and look at what it really wanted to highlight from its can design overall.
The first thing, Currie says, was to make the brand the hero of the can, with the logo at the head of the front panel. The water droplet lightning bolt, initially below the WakeWater name, was made a far more prominent visual element.
Currie tells strategy that WakeWater also explored the potential of changing up its colour scheme, but says that since there’s a lot of white in the competitive set, it opted to stay with its light blue design aesthetic for the sake of brand continuity.
Besides, he says, blue will make the cans stand out better at Loblaw: through September, WakeWater is launching across Loblaw, Zehrs and Independent banners nationally.
At the grocer, it will be part of the “natural value” planogram, alongside adjacent better-for-you brands like Zevia Energy and Steaz Tea, designed to attract healthy, active, urban professionals.
WakeWater will run a digital ad campaign as well, and will have event sampling with a call to action driving consumers to store. It’s exploring some in-store marketing campaigns with Loblaw as well.
In the next six months, Currie says it’ll be exploring different flavours and potentially different functional cases. There’s a possibility WakeWater may explore different can sizes as well, but sleek formats are growing in popularity as consumers enjoy holding them.
Currie stresses that the brand really wants to make sure it’s showing consumer value, as he notices a lot of the market is in the 250 ml can.
“We want consumers to feel like they’re getting great value when they buy WakeWater at 355,” Currie says.
Its packaging redesign was done in-house. The demand creation campaign was done with Toronto boutique shop, Taylor Day. Distribution is in partnership with Neal Brothers, which is responsible for Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes.
