THE BRIEF
Sourz is a brand of alcoholic fruit drinks owned by Beam Inc. The drinks are usually sold as a shot but can be used to make cocktails. The Sourz brand is currently youth orientated, making it popular amongst students and younger generations. Because of this, the drink flavours and image of Sourz are aimed to appeal to this audience.
The brief is to create a new range for Sourz using one of two starting points (seven deadly sins or obscure) to target a more mature audience, whilst retaining a sense of modernity and fun.
I decided to use the seven deadly sins as a starting point due to the way they can be interpreted in a sophisticated way as well as mischievous. This would enable me to keep the fun spirit of Sourz and what they stand for but move them to a new audience.
I named the new range Sourz 7 to hint towards the 7 deadly sins as inspiration behind the sub-range
THE BIG IDEA
The previous re-branding for Sourz was all about communicating the fact that their drinks are versatile and can be mixed with other drinks. I wanted to keep this in mind as I felt it could enhance the new range to reach a wider audience. I decided the main issue I needed to address was to make the new range appealing to people, therefore, the new range drinks needed to be stronger than present. This would then challenge those that have previously seen Sourz as an easy alternative to step up their game.
Flavours determined by sin i.e. envy - passion fruit and apple to reflect the sourness of envy
THE CONCEPT
I looked at numerous ways how to visually portray each sin in a way that could be communicated clearly. I liked the concept of having abstract shapes to represent each sin in a ethereal way because they appear in different forms to us. I did numerous experiments with ink and water to create these shapes and applied these to the bottle. This would also subtly hint at the idea that the drinks are mixable and can be shared with others.
Water and ink experiments
THE RANGE
I needed a way to indicate which drink was the strongest and weakest from the range without having to read the label and details. I put in a system of having bars on the front of the bottles so at a glance you could see which drink was stronger or weaker when comparing it to others.
SHOT BOTTLES
I discovered that the majority of people drank Sourz as a shot but not all the flavours were available together in bars and shops, just the popular ones like apple. I thought there should be a quick and easy way to cater for this so the full range could be available at any given time.
I came up with the idea of selling ready made shot sized drinks. Having them stored in boxes makes it easier for places to store the drinks behind the bar as opposed to lots of big bottles. Again, these could be purchased in ‘bulk’ for a group activity of shots or singularly to mix at home with another drink.
