To say the juice industry is competitive is an understatement. To create the one juice label that consumers will reach for takes a well-thought-out strategy. When designing custom labels for bottles of juice, manufacturers need to hit five key notes for success:
Beverage Labels: Key Ingredients for Success
- Showcase the featured fruits on the beverage label
- Focus on flavor
- Meet all regulatory and industry best practices requirements
- Differentiate the brand
- Tell the brand story
Beverage labels that do all those things—and do them well—have the best chance to stand out among a crowded field. When it comes to beverage label printing, the United States’ best-selling refrigerated juice—Tropicana’s Pure Premium—hits it out of the park.
Other juice makers hoping to replicate their success should study what makes Tropicana’s—and other beverage makers’ juice labels—top market sales in their respective industries.
Showcase the Fruits on the Label
No matter how far away from the refrigerated beverages section a customer is browsing, Tropicana’s iconic juice labels draw them over like a siren to a thirsty sailor. Simply bursting with visual pop, the orange, pierced with a straw to show off its juiciness, tempts buyers to crack open a bottle right then and there. Pops of orange color contrast with green font to create a virtual orchard right there in the supermarket.
Turning Juice Labels into a Vineyard
Another perennial best-seller, Welch’s Grape Juice uses a similar tactic, only with a dewy bunch of Concord grapes front and center and a vineyard in the background. Reinforcing the fact that their juice comes from the intensely flavorful Concord grapes, the company adds “Made from Welch’s Own Concord Grapes” running along the bottom of the label—just to seal the deal.
Creating a Whole Farmers’ Market on a Label
Campbell takes this produce-forward strategy a step further in its V-8 juice labels. With its iconic logo nestled in a label bursting with garden-ripe vegetables, the V-8 label beckons buyers to eat—or drink—their daily quota of good-for-you veggies.
Beverage Label Printing Should Focus on the Flavor
If that straw jammed into Tropicana’s signature orange wasn’t enough, the juice maker takes it even a step further with the text “Never from Concentrate,” a sure indication of its freshness. Capturing the taste on a label can be a challenge, but tasty copy and imagery can get the point across without a taste test.
Look at how fruit-flavored sodas—many of which have zero actual juice—market their drinks’ flavors with captivating beverage label printing. When looking at s Sprite label, for instance, consumers would think that the refreshing beverage is bursting with fruit juice. From the lemon and lime halves splashing into a glass of soda to its label that reads, “100% Natural Flavors,” shoppers anticipate the flavor before they even pour their first drink.
With the real thing packed inside their bottle, juice drink makers, like Tropicana, can elevate their labeling game to a whole new level of flavor with taste-tempting beverage label printing. Coca-Cola’s “Simply” line illustrates that tactic perfectly.
With a taste-tempting image of an orange, lemon, or lime, drenched in dew and bearing a leaf front and center, the beverage maker piles on with text that reads, “Fresh taste guaranteed” and of course, “Not from Concentrate.” The theme: freshness. Carried throughout the product’s labeling, the Simply series’ labels take the promise of fresh taste to the next level.
Design Labels That Meet Regulatory and Best Practices Standards
Both industry leaders and governmental bodies have teamed up to ensure that consumers get the beverage the label promises and that the product is safe for them to consume.
Label for Safety
California, for instance, requires that beverage labels for perishables, such as refrigerated juices, bear the words “Perishable, Keep Refrigerated.” If the juice is frozen, the label must substitute the word “frozen” for “refrigerated. Labels of shelf-stable juices that need to be refrigerated after opening should have “Refrigerate After Opening” clearly written on their labels. If the juice you make isn’t pasteurized, your label must state a warning about the dangers of consuming harmful bacteria along with the beverage.
Label for Content
If a beverage isn’t 100 percent juice, it must state so—either in the percentage of each type of juice or labeling it as an “orange-flavored juice drink” to let consumers know that they aren’t getting pure juice. Manufacturers must also careful not to include the word “organic” on beverage labels unless the product’s ingredients are certified as organic.
Design Custom Labels that Differentiate the Brand
To define its brand, a juice manufacturer must first define its target market, as Louisiana State University researcher Tatiana Bonilla pointed out in her paper “Analysis of consumer preferences toward 100% fruit juice packages and labels.” Once a brand defines to whom it wants to market its juices, then it can get on with the business of designing custom labels for bottles of juice that appeal to those people.
After the brand has done its research, it’s time to brainstorm label design and copy that will grab target customers’ attention and set the brand apart from the rest. That process starts with choosing a logo that reflects the brand’s target customers’ preferences.
Legacy brands—such as Coca-Cola—tweak their logos from time to time to better reflect their market’s preferences. If, for example, the company’s products have taken a turn toward more organic and natural products, it might be a good idea to redesign the logo to reflect a more natural, earthy look. Or, as Minute Maid did, clothe that legacy logo in a nature-inspired cloak: fruits, leaves, and splashes of water.
The rest of the label should blend in seamlessly with both the logo and the ingredient images that decorate the label. Designing custom labels for bottles of juice must let shoppers know exactly who has made the product. Having highly branded labels is the most effective way to catch their eye.
Design Labels that Tell the Brand Story
Nothing draws a customer to a brand like an amazing product with a great story behind it. A brand story needn’t be long. In fact, it can be as short as a tagline—if the tagline tells the story. Think of Pepsi’s youth-grabbing tag, “For Those Who Think Young.” Or, if the brand is one that has a family history as fruit growers, include a sentence or short paragraph about how the brand evolved from fruit growers to fruit juice manufacturers. Building interest and brand loyalty with stories is an important ingredient in a successful label.
When you want to label your products with designs and copy that will grab your target customers’ heartstrings, the design experts at Nova Custom Printing can help. Get in touch with our label design team team today!
