Fanta’s Redesign is a Fruitful Change

While Fanta’s recent packaging overhaul may not look like a runaway success on the stats sheet, it’s worth keeping in mind that people will generally gravitate toward the familiar. Therefore, the benchmark we always set for any packaging redesign is to simply break-even with the incumbent. But, if we’re here celebrating a break-even result, why spend an eye watering amount of time and money creating the change in the first place…? Come with us now on a fanta-stic voyage and we’ll explain exactly why!

First things first, let’s uncover exactly what the big wigs down at Coca-Cola HQ were aiming to get out of this bright and funky packaging overhaul. Says Rapha Abreu, global VP of design, “we wanted to portray a brand that values spontaneous play and the benefit it brings.” Essentially, the aim was to reconnect Fanta with its fun and playful roots.

To achieve this, Fanta obliterated soft rounded typographic elements used for the lockup and instead replaced them with a much bolder duotone wordmark. In addition, the realistic fruit imagery was ditched in favor of animated depictions of each flavor variant. As a result, the color and flavor iconography better-harmonized with one another. This served to boost the can’s on-shelf presence and provided a more streamlined visual block across the flavor range.

The design team also stripped the packaging of all its trimmings, eliminating a number of contrasting violators that took focus away from the most engaging design elements and most important information. Gone was the green “100% natural” and “no caffeine” callouts. Small changes, sure, but along with these tweaks helping achieve greater congruency of design elements, they also served to convey the product’s energizing properties more clearly. The end result was a 9pt increase in ‘fun’ impressions compared to the previous design.

Overall, when you directly compare the old and new designs on our key measures for success, the two benchmark relatively similarly. However, digging a little deeper it becomes clear that the refresh successfully achieved the contemporary facelift the marketing team was aiming for while at the same time imbuing the brand with the desired ‘fun’ connotations. This was able to be achieved without sacrificing perceptions of taste or detracting from elements that make Fanta so recognizable in the first place. Given we know familiarity breeds contentment, we expect the new design to ‘wear-in’ as time goes on and subsequently elevate Fanta’s game to the next level.

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