C&C shows bottle with £2m facelift

C&C Ireland will spend £2 million (€2.54 million) relaunching the Club Orange brand with a marketing programme that includes new packaging and extensive advertising.

Club Orange has been around for 70 years and the company hopes to build on the success of the brand with the new image.

The portfolio of Club brands had sales of £65 million last year and, according to C&C's managing director, Mr Colin Gordon: "The investment represents a massive vote of confidence in the brand."

The advertising campaign, which starts on RTE tomorrow evening, was devised by Cawley Nea advertising and the two humorous commercials feature a voiceover by Irish comedian Graham Norton. They were directed by Syd McCartney, whose latest film, A Love Divided, has just finished a successful cinema release. The television campaign will be supported by outdoor media and a below-the-line marketing programme.

The State's soft drinks market is worth about £350 million and is considered to be highly developed. The overall market grew by 4 per cent last year with Club sales across the product range increasing by 10 per cent. An Irish person drinks an average 111 litres of soft drinks a year, compared with 80 litres for our European neighbours. In contrast, we drink 14 litres of bottled water each per year while mainland Europeans drink 88 litres.

Our habits are changing, however, with our bottled water market growing by 25 per cent last year.

Apart from his product's intrinsic characteristics, Mr Gordon attributes Club's growth rate to the company's investment in supply infrastructure including coolers, vending machines and increased distribution, as well as a strong growth in the grocery trade.

The Club brand covers five products including a recently introduced Club Light. Club has 40 per cent of the orange sector in the grocery trade and more than 60 per cent of the orange sector in the licensed trade.

"Our packaging brief to the design company Huguenot was to literally show the recipe on the sleeve," says Mr Gordon. Hence the introduction of blue for water and the strong fruit image. "As Club is recognised as one of Ireland's brand successes, we were particularly pleased that the entire job, from design to advertising, could be so well executed by Irish agencies."