Introduction
The essence of brand innovation is the creation of a product that aims at solving problems that face the society. Therefore, there must be the availability of factors that tend to affect brands in a way that leads to their innovation. The brand innovation may be looking to address issues concerned with the sustainability of the environment among other aspects (Gardner and Cooper, 2014). However, this brand innovation exercise will analyze a brand innovation that tends to look at more intricate matters involving the health of the population on a local and international level.
The issue of living a healthy lifestyle has remained a critical issue for most companies that deal with consumables. The World Health Organization has reported many lifestyle diseases that are brought about by existing unhealthy lifestyle habits that tend to be the norm in society. Critical diseases, such as diabetes, chronic ailments, and cancer have been associated with what people consume (Senapati, Bharti, and Bhattacharya, 2015). For instance, obesity has been associated unhealthy lifestyles that involves no exercise while eating unhealthy food. The need for a balanced diet has widely been replaced by fast foods, which cause many side effects over an extended period of time (Mozaffarian, 2016).
The United States, in particular, holds the largest number of these reported diseases (Mozaffarian, 2016), which has been due to the assumed mode of living that has made the population give up healthy living practices. One of the main healthy living practices is living on a balanced diet while conducting physical exercises regularly. However, recent studies have shown that the general population is becoming more and more aware of the need for leading a healthy lifestyle (Senapati et al., 2016). One of the ways to realize this is to stop taking in soft drinks that lead to health conditions that are very life threatening. The allure of healthy commercial drinks started gaining momentum in the United States, creating a major problem for the soft drinks industry in how they would try to provide an appropriate product for the health conscious segment of the soft drinks market.
Need for a Solution
In response to the issue of healthy living practices, approaches need to be utilized to effect a change of behavior in the general population and how they lead their lives. This way, more and more people would be able to live healthy productive lives due to the removed vulnerabilities that tend to make them susceptible to lifestyle diseases. This will eventually lead to the realization that a healthy lifestyle is more profitable in the long run. To effect this, I propose that multinational soft drinks manufacturers create a healthy product that offers a wide variety of benefits to the consumers. This would create a brand awareness that would, in turn, educate people on the advantages of leading a healthy lifestyle, leading to a cultural change for unhealthy lifestyles to healthy lifestyles (Tsai et al., 2014).
Brand innovators have considered the challenges and the effects that these challenges have on the society at large. The issue of health complications arising from the leading of unhealthy lifestyles has led to numerous health issues that have resulted in financial costs for the individual and the states causing financial burdens for involved parties. Furthermore, the decrease in productivity that is witnessed by sick individuals leads to an overall decrease in national productivity of the average individual. This has major implications for the society that tend to impact negatively on the quality of life.
Brand Design
My proposed product design to address the issue of unhealthy soft drinks and their resulting impact on the ability to lead a healthy life is the creation of a drink that would have a variety of health benefits to the common consumer. The design of this brand is inspired by the need to promote healthy living across all ages in our society. This has been compounded by the need to change the lifestyle habits that place people in a very unhealthy situation that has resulting negative impacts on the society. These needs will be met through the design of a product that seems to cater for these issues in different perspectives. The healthy soft drink will be available to the consumers worldwide creating a health awareness campaign that will help people adopt a healthy lifestyle in the long run while appreciating the benefits therein.
The choice for the design is a good recommendation due to its allure to the modern society. The soft drink, called Diet Coke, has its origins in the United States. The product was introduced in the United States on August 9, 1982, shortly after it was unveiled by the Coca-Cola Company (Koschmann and Sheth, 2016). The product was attached with a certain commitment to address the health issues brought about by soft drinks in the market. In its apparent drive to solve such challenges, the brand will be determined to develop various aspects over time with regard to the changing business times in the modern environment.
The design of the product will remain to be simple to attract a more conserved segment of the soft drinks market. However, the simplicity will be complemented by a classy touch that would ensure its trending in the largely diverse business environment of the modern world. In its entirety, the brand design will focus on providing health benefits to the consumer while still providing the same enjoyment and fun in taking a soft drink.
The resulting design of the product would be a soft drink product that encompasses all the joys of consuming a soft drink while providing a variety of health benefits to the consumer. The drink will be made from naturally grown fruits that are fresh and are highly nutritious. The drink will be a combination of fruits that are blended and provided to the consumer in a way that will facilitate carrying it to the gym or any other location. The bottle that will be packaged with the drink will be in such a way that it is easier to grip on it when going for a run or to the gym or jogging. The bottle will be lighter than many of the bottles that package soft drinks as it will be made from light plastic materials.
Design Storyboard
The Storyboard for the design of Diet Coke will commence with recognizing the problem to be solved and highlighting different aspects of the problem. This will be illustrated in the following way; people will be in hospitals being treated for lifestyle diseases. This would result from a number of people suffering from lifestyle diseases not being able to carry on their lives in the normal manner. Another scene will include people living an unhealthy lifestyle through regularly eating junk food and other unhealthy life practices. The combination of the two scenarios will form the cause and effect and thereby the essence in addressing the situation. For the purposes of solving the problem, we will show an individual conducting physical exercises in outdoor locations or in indoor gyms. An end result is a number of people who are dehydrated and need some highly nutritious drink to boost their hydration levels and also provide important nutrients for the purpose of facilitating physical exercises. This storyboard aims at defining the underlying factors that made it possible to come up with the design above.
Brand Development
The design of this brand will take into consideration its two parts. One, the drink will be made from highly nutritious fruits that promote healthy living. The drink will also have the effect of hydrating an individual who has gone through vigorous physical exercise. Two, the bottle that will hold the drink will be made from light plastic to facilitate moving with it from one place to another easily. The bottle’s design will also cater for the aspect of grip as it would be designed to be an easy to hold on to the bottle while jogging or conducting other hands-free physical exercises.
Mood Board
The mood board will be influential in depicting the need for brand design. As illustrated, the mood board elaborates what expectations are set for the brand innovation design expected for this project. The mood board is crucial in defining the mood and also the color scheme that is achieved through the design.
Tender Timeline and Design Originality
Diet Coke is not a new product in the soft drink business. It traced its origin to the United States in 1982. It was an invention of the Coca-Cola Company. Ever since it was invented, Diet Coke has made much progress in the soft drinks business making it stand out as a leader in healthy drinks. The original design of Diet Coke was a diet soda that would have less sugar as opposed to the Cola drink which was not sugar-free. The original design was based on a different recipe from the Coke drink. However, the recipe was later complemented with artificial sweeteners. The product has been successful in addressing the low sugar regime part of the soft drinks market. Nonetheless, the design of the product has not been made available to the international market with much enthusiasm because of the nature of its consumers.
The choice for Diet Coke to effect the design is dependent on the proven ability of the company to provide a drink that contains health benefits for the consumers. Furthermore, the bottle design and formula of making the drink relates to the organization’s interest in the soft drinks market.
Competition
Observing and researching about previous brands that offer similar products in the soft drinks market has significantly helped in the quest to develop our product further. Pepsi produced a soft drink called Diet Pepsi that offers a unique sugar-free taste for soft drink lovers who are healthy conscious (Aaron, and Siegel, 2017). Diet Pepsi was capitalizing the market through the design of a sugar-free product which mainly influenced further development of Diet Coke. The problem with Diet Pepsi is that it only offered a sugar-free alternative to soft drinks. However, this design is aimed at providing a good taste while still holding health benefits for the consumers, that they may enjoy a healthy product just as much as they enjoy a soft drink.
Unique Design
The proposed healthy drink design was supposed to be a unique never before designed product, with a touch of elegance, class, and style. The foundation of the design is to have an easy to carry trendy bottle containing a healthy and nutritious drink. To achieve this mixture of qualities, some characteristics need to be added. The bottle top will be somehow attached to the bottle so that it is not detached once it is opened. Second, the bottle will come in various colors that will be the sole preference of the consumer. The color will work towards attracting a variety of consumers according to preference. However, the whole design of the product will be aimed at the healthy conscious segment of the market who appreciate the unique features that are beneficial in a healthy way. The main aim of the design is to encourage people to involve in regular physical exercises in a fun way with the Diet Coke, healthy drink.
Relationship between the Design and the Problem
As it was depicted in the introduction, the major issue that created the design is the need to create a form of health awareness and encourage people to pick up healthy lifestyle habits. These habits would work towards reducing the number of reported lifestyle disease that occur, as a way to support healthy living among people. The contents of the healthy drink will be nutritious and hence be beneficial to the consumer in the long run. Furthermore, the healthy drink will work towards facilitating hydration during physical exercises.
Impact of the Design on the Chosen Brand
The chosen brand for this design is Diet Coke. This brand has managed to surpass the expectations of business people through its innovative nature to address serious problems in the modern society. It has become a leader of sorts in the soft drinks market providing enjoyment and quality while not forgetting creativity. The brand has been successful in addressing health concerns of the healthy conscious segment of the market. The new design for the brand will achieve an increase in sales and a larger customer base that will relate to the features of the product.
Bibliography
Aaron, D.G. and Siegel, M.B., 2017. Sponsorship of national health organizations by two major soda companies. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 52(1), pp.20-30.
Gardner, J. and Cooper, B., 2014. Entrepreneur’s Guide To The Lean Brand: How Brand Innovation Builds Passion, Transforms Organizations and Creates Value. Market By Numbers, LLC.
Koschmann, A. and Sheth, J.N., 2016. Do Brands Compete or Coexist? Evidence from the Cola Wars. Kilts Center for Marketing at Chicago Booth – Nielsen Dataset Paper Series 2-051. Available at SSRN: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2776376
Mozaffarian, D. (2016). Dietary and policy priorities for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity. Circulation, 133(2), 187-225.
Senapati, S., Bharti, N., & Bhattacharya, A. (2015). Modern lifestyle diseases: chronic diseases, awareness and prevention. Int J Curr Res Acad Rev, 3(3), 215-23.
Tsai, Y.S., Liao, S.K. and Wu, H.L., 2014. Building Multi-Brand Innovation Value: Thermaltake. Management Review, 33, pp.185-192.
