Reformed Characters

Drinks Branding
Drinks branding, retail strategy, brand world, packaging design & marketing for a new range of bold botanical alcohol free drinks.
Type Of Client
Food & Beverage
Type Of Work
Brand Naming Brand Strategy Branding Packaging Design Website Design Marketing

The Brief

Reformed Characters was conceived as our own agency-owned challenger brand – a premium range of alcohol-free bold botanical drinks. Our category research and retail data showed that although the alcohol-free category was growing year on year – consumers still felt that alcohol-free drinks felt like a substitute, a lesser than version of the ‘real’ thing. These insights underpinned all of our work in bringing a new brand and proposition to the ‘Low & No’ market. Our category research showed us that the people who were really “taking a break from booze”, were usually the life and soul of the party.

We set out to a create a bold and ballsy brand in alcohol-free – all character, no compromise.

The Work

We played into cult sayings and meme culture, creating the brand name ‘Reformed Characters’ – trademarking in the UK & USA.

Our ambition was to create a ‘cult’ brand in alcohol-free, a can which consumers could drink in a bar or a club and not feel out of place with.

We designed a series of ‘reformed character’ illustrations, hinting at the very nature of hangovers, blackouts, sunday scaries – and the reasons realistically why we all end up ‘taking a break from booze’.

Our can designs feature bold metallic full spread pattern designs. We launched with 3 unique SKU’s each with it’s own personality and identity, The ‘Herbaceous Character’, ‘Dark & Decadent Character’, and ‘Bittersweet Character’ – maintaining category ownability as global alcohol group brands continued to enter the space.

Our work spanned:

  1. Brand Naming & Origin – trademarking in UK & US markets.
  2. Brand Strategy & Brand Positioning – finding Reformed Character’s unique place and way to win within the Low & No category.
  3. Verbal Branding – creating own-able brand language including “Bold Botanical Alcohol-Free Drinks for Healthy Hedonists”, “Unapologetically Alcohol-Free”, and “All Character, No Compromise”.
  4. Packaging Design – a range of 3 unique packaging designs.
  5. Product Development – including drinks strategy, formulation and working with manufacturer runs.
  6. Retail Strategy – retail pitch decks, scaling and securing buyer interest.
  7. Shopify Store – full e-commerce subscription site.
  8. Launch Marketing & Social Media – creating an entire brand world and knowledge base.

The Outcome

Upon launch – Reformed Characters received buyer meetings and interest for stocking from major retailers, indies and more including Selfridge’s, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, airlines and more. Including export to the USA, Canada & Europe.