Contact Information: For more information, please contact the following: Anne Dean Anthem Worldwide Managing Director, Toronto (416) 538-3002 anne.dean@anthemww.com Jennifer Adams Schawk, Inc. Corporate Communications (513) 562-3506 jennifer.adams@schawk.com
Mike's Hard Lemonade(TM) New Packaging Design by Anthem Worldwide Results in Sales Lift
| Source: Schawk, Inc.
TORONTO--(Marketwire - August 12, 2009) - Anthem Worldwide, a Schawk (NYSE : SGK ) Strategic
Design Company, whose integrated global network provides innovative
solutions to articulate, unify and manage brand impact to create compelling
and consistent brand experiences, announced the recent release of its new
package design for well-known spirits brand Mike's Hard Lemonade™.
Mike's Hard Lemonade™ is a Canadian-based corporation, with its head
office in Vancouver, Canada. Mike's Hard Lemonade™ was launched in
Canada in 1996 and is a mixture of lemonade made with real lemon juice and
premium vodka.
"For the past 12 years, the marketing world has created an industry around
hip, rule-breaking brand introductions," said Anne Dean, managing director
of Anthem's Toronto office. "By building on the energy of this authentic
and original breakthrough brand, we re-designed the packaging to strengthen
the core visual equities of Mike's Hard Lemonade™. This enabled the
brand to realize sales lift, demonstrating the power of compelling
packaging. It also reinforces the power of packaging as the ultimate
consumer touchpoint. If your brand's package can engage shoppers and breaks
through at shelf, it has the power to turn shoppers into buyers."
Anthem helped craft a sense of authenticity, character and individuality
for Mike's Hard Lemonade™ by evolving and focusing on key brand equity
elements, such as "A CANADIAN ORIGINAL" and the fact that Mike's Hard
Lemonade is made with "ALL NATURAL FLAVOURS," which differentiate this
beverage from the rest of the category. Focusing on key brand equity
elements served to strengthen the connection between the familiar equities
that consumers associate with the brand to new ideas that contemporize the
brand. Essentially, the re-design broadened the personification of the
brand by modulating the visual equities.
"In our competitive industry, speed to market is crucial," said Chris
Pfeifer, Director of Marketing, Specialty Beverages, of Mark Anthony Group
Inc., parent company to Mike's Hard Lemonade™. "Anthem's fresh,
evolutionary and contemporary design expressed the true values and
character of the Mike's Hard Lemonade™ brand and enabled us to take this
project from brief to shelf in just 16 weeks."
Continued Pfeifer: "Anthem's understanding of the core essence of the brand
and key consumer insights allowed them to quickly establish credibility
with the brand. Since the new design was launched, sales for these Mike's
Hard Lemonade™ products at the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, or LCBO,
have been 'outpacing our competitors' by a margin of 10 to 20 percent, most
of which we attribute to the new packaging."
Added Pfeifer: "Anthem's and Schawk's holistic brand point management
capabilities certainly differentiate themselves from other firms and helped
to differentiate Mike's Hard Lemonade™ to consumers in today's crowded
alcoholic beverage marketplace."
Anne Marie Pagliacci, executive vice president, managing group director of
Anthem Worldwide, added, "Today our competencies are working more closely
than ever to deliver the brand point management position to our clients
from strategic to creative to executional. Our teams worked side by side to
maintain design and brand integrity through the entire project to create a
successful end result. Anthem focuses on strategic and creative excellence,
while Schawk focuses on premedia executional excellence. This is what makes
our brand point management positioning so powerful."
Brand point management is a powerful way of guiding brands through today's
challenging environment while creating a compelling and consistent brand
experience for consumers on a global scale. To gain further understanding
on the important role of brand point management, please access Schawk's
White Paper, "Brand Point Management: Creating Compelling and Consistent
Brand Experiences" by visiting
http://www.schawk.com/insights-and-work/insights/white-papers
Anthem Worldwide, a Schawk Strategic Design Company, is an integrated
global network that provides innovative solutions to articulate, unify and
manage brand impact. Anthem creates compelling brand experiences by
aligning its strategic, creative and executional talent worldwide with the
business needs of companies seeking a competitive advantage. Anthem offers
a full range of branding and design services to our clients including
Campbell's, Coca-Cola, E-Mart, Foster's, General Electric, Hbc,
Kimberly-Clark, Microsoft, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Revlon, Safeway and
Unilever. With our network of world-class design professionals in 12
cities, Anthem is presently located in Chicago, Cincinnati, Hilversum (The
Netherlands), London, Melbourne, New Jersey, New York, San Francisco,
Singapore, Sydney, Toronto, and York (U.K.). For more information on
Anthem, please visit http://www.anthemww.com
Schawk, Inc., (NYSE : SGK ), is a leading provider of brand point management
services, enabling companies of all sizes to connect their brands with
consumers to create deeper brand affinity. With a global footprint of 48
offices, Schawk helps companies create compelling and consistent brand
experiences by providing integrated strategic, creative and executional
services across brand touchpoints. Founded in 1953, Schawk is trusted by
many of the world's leading organizations to help them achieve global brand
consistency. For more information about Schawk, visit http://www.schawk.com
Mike's Hard Lemonade™. For more information about Mike's Hard
Lemonade™, visit http://www.mikeshardlemonade.ca.