Brand Stretch: Elastic Food & Drink Development

Published 15 April 2016

Authors

Marta Mąkolska,

Mandy Saven

From Heineken-branded candles and Carlsberg shampoo to Pepsi’s hip restaurant and Cadbury’s Creme Egg pop-up, Stylus charts inventive food and beverage brands stretching beyond their traditional remits in meaningful ways, helping them win new consumer audiences and gain local credibility.

Inventive food and beverage brands are looking outside conventional category norms and experimenting with cross-industry formats. Symbiotic partnerships between likeminded brands are creating compelling product mash-ups that adhere to core brand values.
Creative brands are bringing products to life with imaginative retail and hospitality settings. British chocolate brand Cadbury’s pop-up café serves up creations made exclusively with its chocolate Creme Eggs, enabling visitors to experience products in the context of the Cadbury brand narrative and ethos.
Traditional packaging cues are being subverted by shrewd brands in an effort to generate maximum shelf standout. 
Aiming to establish closer connections with regional audiences, intuitive brands are creating products inspired by local holidays, festivals and cultural nuances. This enables them to woo uncertain consumers with familiarity and tradition.
‘To retain credibility for brand stretch, brands need to have established in the minds of consumers a strong sense of what they stand for beyond the functional… a brand then has license to extend into all sorts of areas that are compatible with its heartland,’ Alex Ririe, at UK creative agency Coley Porter Bell, told Stylus.

Brand Stretch: Elastic Food & Drink Development

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Topics

Grocery
Advertising & Branding
Packaging & Graphics
Retail

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Sector Outlook 27/28: Beer

The beer category is bursting with creative energy. As brands lean into premiumisation to drive value, they're crafting functional formulations, standout packaging for every lifestyle occasion and boldly inventive flavour profiles to win over adventurous drinkers.

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