Coca-Cola mini bottle: Shape supports simplistic design

Many consumers are easily swayed by arresting packaging design that is simplistic in nature. Coca-Cola is a strong believer in the marketing value of terrific package design, and its new 8.5-oz decorated bottles of Coca-Cola serve as a prime example.

In a posting on The Huffington Post’s Web site, Val Brown, a brand marketing consultant, acknowledges she hasn’t purchased soft drinks for years, but the decorative effects on the new Coca-Cola bottles were so startling that she couldn’t resist making a purchase, purely for the packaging.

There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence, by the way, that some consumers will purchase a product purely for the display value of the packaging. The shopper has no intention whatsoever of consuming or using the product. One aisle of the store where this happens is golf balls, but Coca-Cola also has found a new way to elevate its brand to that level with the newly designed minibottles.

And, the smaller package satisfies another consumer desire that is driving sales in many food and beverage products today: portion control.

Of course, the bottles, which appear to be shrink-wrapped, leverage Coca-Cola’s iconic contoured shape . But the depth of the design goes beyond that. The central graphic on the bottle is the logo. A stroke of genius is the more subtle drop shadow of the familiar bottle shape.

Marrying structural and graphical elements, this package is a winner on multiple levels.