Honey-sweetened, natural attributes lead beverage bottle redesign

“Honeydrop launched in 2008, and after two years in a highly competitive and fast-growing marketplace, the brand needed to work harder to differentiate on-shelf,” she explains. The brand’s core attribute: It’s the only ready-to-drink brewed tea and juice product sweetened only with honey, with no refined sugars or artificial ingredients.

To position the brand as a premium product, Honeydrop Beverages switched from a PET bottle to a 14-oz custom glass bottle from Vitro Packaging (www.vitro.com/vitro_packaging) that sports embossed bee designs at the top. Martyn notes that the bottle shape takes its cue from a milk bottle design, “which helps communicate Honeydrop’s natural positioning.”

Other design updates include the use of a clear label to allow for product transparency, a redesign of the package’s central graphic—a bee icon—to have more character and to look more like real honey, a simple color system for flavor differentiation, and new copy, “from the bee to the bottle,” that sends a clear, unified message that Honeydrop is made with real honey.

On the back of the transparent wrap label, offset-printed in four colors plus white by General Press (www.generalpress.com), simple icons, such as a chamomile flower and a tablespoon of honey, depict product ingredients. A back-of-pack “brand badge” is designed to raise awareness of Colony Collapse Disorder and Honeydrop’s commitment to supporting the honey industry.