Larger Bottle, Shrink-Sleeve Label Refreshing Changes for Clearly Canadian
Premium Image With Value
The Times are A-Changin'
Diet Water
Reacting to intense competition in the beverage industry and declining sales of its flagship brand, Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp. (Vancouver, B.C.) has unveiled a dramatic new look for its Clearly Canadian sparkling flavored water. Along with a bigger, 14-oz bottle, the company has adopted full-body shrink-sleeve labeling with an upscale graphic design.
In addition to a larger package with an updated image, the company has also introduced a new diet line extension. With these changes, Clearly Canadian hopes to attract new consumers to a brand that helped jump-start the alternative beverage phenomenon a decade ago.
"In today's beverage marketplace, packaging, value and positioning are competitive pressures that established brands such as Clearly Canadian increasingly face," says Douglas L. Mason, president/CEO, Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp. "To maintain and grow the business, we must continue to innovate. This competitive reality underlies our bold decision to dramatically redesign the look of Clearly Canadian."
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The new proprietary 14-oz (414-ml) bottle, supplied by Owens Brockway Glass Containers (Richmond, IL), presents a sleeker, more premium image than the previous 11-oz Clearly Canadian bottle. Topping the package is a silver aluminum screw cap from Silgan Containers International Corp. (Richmond, IL).
Featuring a 28-mm finish, the clear glass bottle also gives the consumer more product for the same money. The old 11-oz container, says Clearly Canadian's Jonathon Cronin, vp/marketing, retailed for essentially the same price as the new 14-oz package — between 89 cents and $1.09 per bottle. The new, larger bottles will be sold strictly as single-serves unlike the 11-oz bottles, which were sold in four-packs, though retailers had the option of breaking the packs and selling the bottles as singles.
New full-body shrink-sleeve labeling, which Mason says gives the brand "a contemporary presence on store shelves," replaces Clearly Canadian's applied plastic labels (APLs). The 2-mil PETG (polyethylene terephthalate glycol) shrink-sleeve labels are produced by Toronto-based CCL Industries Inc. and are rotogravure-printed in six colors. The labels display the new Clearly Canadian logo — "CC" in the middle of an effervescent circle — which conveys youthful energy and communicates the product's carbonation.
The ultra modern label design features large splashes of color that the company says depict the product's refreshing natural flavors along with a translucent front window. Each of the five flavors of Clearly Canadian sparkling water — Cherry, Blackberry, Strawberry Melon, Raspberry Cream and White Grape — is distinguished by a different color label.
The labels are applied at Clearly Canadian's Burlington, WA, and Toronto facilities via a PDC International (Norwalk, CT) model R300 shrink-sleeve machine, which utilizes a steam tunnel and electric forced hot air to apply up to 325 labels per minute. Using the shrink-sleeve system, Clearly Canadian no longer needs to pre-label its bottles and, thus, achieves increased manufacturing flexibility for future additions or extensions to the brand.
The brand also includes a new 1L shrink-sleeved bottle that takes the new Clearly Canadian look. The 1L product is available in all the flavors except Raspberry Cream. And, according to Cronin, Clearly Canadian will be introducing a new product later this Spring that will also utilize the new shrink-sleeve packaging.
The Times are A-Changin'
Acknowledging that the Clearly Canadian brand and package had become "stale," Cronin tells PackagingNetwork.com that it was about time the company updated its flagship offering. "Market reseach told us that consumers are attracted to different packaging types. The old bottle had become too familiar. They want a package that is keeping up with the times," says Cronin. "What they told us is, ‘The product is great, but we don't notice it on the shelves anymore.'"
This translated into declining sales, which also factored into the company's decision to change the look of its chief product. Cronin says total sales for the Clearly Canadian brand dropped "about 15%" in 1999.
Value was also a consideration in going to the larger size. "There's a trend in the beverage industry toward larger sizes," says Cronin.
Diet Water
As part of the new packaging initiative, Clearly Canadian is also introducing new diet choices for its sparkling flavored water line that are formulated with a blend of two non-caloric sweeteners: Splenda sucralose and new ace-K (acesulfame potassium). The new diet varieties are offered in Cherry and Blackberry flavors and feature a reverse label from the non-diet version for easy recognition on store shelves and displays.
Ace-K is a high-intensity sweetener that is 200 times sweeter than sugar, the company says. The highly stable ingredient helps beverages sustain their sweetness over longer periods of time than conventional non-caloric sweeteners. Sucralose is a free-flowing, water-soluble, white crystalline powder that on average is about 600 times sweeter than sugar, but, of course, without the calories.
The new Clearly Canadian flavored waters will be launched in a national rollout throughout the United States and Canada beginning this month. The updated look for the Clearly Canadian brand will be supported by a "See CLEARLY Now" creative campaign. The print campaign will include trade advertising in national publications and a host of point-of-sale materials to complement on-site consumer sampling events. Free-standing coolers and end-cap displays will be used to maximize Clearly Canadian's merchandising profile in retail outlets.
For more information:
Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp., Vancouver, B.C., Tel: 604-683-0312.
Owens Brockway Glass Containers, Richmond, IL, Tel: 815-672-3141.
Silgan Containers International Corp., Richmond, IL, Tel: 815-562-1250.
CCL Industries Inc., Toronto, Tel: 416-756-8500.
PDC International Corp., Norwalk, CT, Tel: 203-853-1516.
Edited by Bill Noone, Managing Editor, Packaging Network