Drinking juice and tea will make you the best person ever.
by phill
I’ve been sitting on this one for a little while, much to the amusement of my lunch colleagues. I’m a person that will read the packaging on just about everything. I like looking at all the little numbers telling me how incredibly unhealthy what I’m consuming is, then turning the bottle to watch as the bright colours and doublespeak tries to convince me otherwise.
Sometime last week I noticed that the wording on one of those brightly coloured packages was, well, slightly off. For the record, we’re talking about Spring Valley’s new packaging design on their iced teas and juices. I’ll throw the first one at you straight up just to give you an indication of what we’re looking at here:
“Black. It’s a cool colour. It’s strong. It’s got a ‘you can’t touch this’ attitude. It makes you look thinner when you wear it. And when you drink Black Ice Tea you can feel yourself becoming a cooler person for drinking it. Not just because it’s black, but it’s refreshing. Black Ice Tea, it’s cool.”
Keep in mind throughout this that we are talking about drinks. Drinks that you imbibe for the sole purpose of rehydrating and/or because you enjoy the taste. I don’t know where this ‘cool’ shit is coming from, I was pretty sure that the target market for juice was pretty solidly defined. We’ll continue.
“Dear My Body, I am so sorry for what I have done to you. And while I cannot promise that I won’t do it to you again I would like to attempt to make it up to you by giving you this Rosehip and Hibiscus Ice Tea. I assure you that it will only taste good, is caffeine-free and delicious. Once again, please accept and enjoy my apology.”
Apparently, tasting good and being delicious are mutually exclusive. Also, tea with 32.4 grams of sugar per bottle will appease your body’s health demands. Onto the juices now, as they hadn’t rolled out the White and Green Tea versions of their new labels where I am.
“After just one sip of this heaven-sent, preservative-free juice, that halo perched precariously above your head will flicker back to life like a broken neon sign. This of course signals the start of repentance for the pain you’ve put your body through over the weekend.”
Of course. The wording here just plain confuses me. A ‘broken neon sign’ will never ‘flicker back to life’. It’s broken. Sans flicker. Bereft of life it rests in peace. If you hadn’t invoked it in a metaphor it’d be pushing up the daises. Also, apple juice is now some kind of mobile confessional for my sins? My head is starting to hurt from trying to think like the person who wrote these, let’s move on.
“Orange Juice is one of those great drinks with a split personality. It likes to hit the town and mixes happily with somewhat dubious company. Orange Juice and its somewhat dubious company can get you into all sort! On the flipside, Orange Juice pulls up well in the mornings too, with a zesty spring in its step and daily dose of Vitamin C.“
Yeah, you know, those drinks with a split personality. You know the ones? Right? And you’d better remember that Orange Juice mixes with dubious company because if you didn’t catch that dubious company the first time you might run into some dubious company if you’re not careful about watching out for dubious company. Yes, they’re referring to orange juice as a mixer, but shit. It’s orange juice. Not the fucking Yakuza.
“There are some things that come in bottles that are not so good for you. You know what we’re talking about. But then there’s Spring Valley Orange & Mango Juice, free from artificial colours and flavours and preservatives. Congratulations — you picked the right bottle this time…”
…you sly, dirty dog you. This one really pushes the no artificial contents thing, which makes me wonder why the others don’t really do so. Is it because they do have artificial colours and flavours? Well yeah, they do, looking at the contents. So why put it on this one? It makes it bleedlingly obvious that the others do contain the artificial bits! Gah!
Okay, okay, maybe I’m just incredibly cynical about the whole advertising thing, but I just thought that juice and tea were pretty firmly entrenched in our daily buying routine. Why do you need all this crap about being a badass for drinking juice? Why do we need to imply that these are party drinks? I’m pretty much ready to abandon the notion of label designers having any kind of brain at all.
But then I think back at the fact that I obsessed over the stupidity of these labels enough to buy each and every one (multiple times, because I lost a couple of them) and post a blog about them.
Touche Spring Valley. Touche.
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Comments
http://www.springvalley.com.au/html/apple_blackcurrant.html
It gets worse.
By the way, do you know what cochineal is? Mmm, I do love a good red bug dye.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochineal
ah but you see, Black IS cool. I’m feelin’ these advertisin’ wizards.
Hah, yeah I’d gone to their site but it was ‘under construction’. Apparently by retarded chimps.
I love me a bit of thorax, yum yum (:
Heh, you would.
Are you suggesting black isn’t cool? Dang. There goes almost the entirety of my wardrobe.
You’re proper fucked. >:D
They so totally ripped off that ‘hip “health’ drink label hip-ly talking to consumers’ thing off nutrient water or vitamin water or whatever. The “rehab” variety of one of those tries to be hip by referring to Ben Cousins. Boo. It does taste yummy though.
@ cian — hrm. Realising dyes are made from bugs gives a whole new meaning to “natural colours and flavours”. Give me fake red-cordial flavour over natural bug dye any day!!!
Oh lawdy at the Ben Cousins ref, that’s horrific! And I can understand the angle of this whole directly talking to the consumer from the label thing, but it doesn’t really work if that label is portrayed as a socially retarded hipster: “I’m cool, honest!”
The whole entire relaunch of the spring valley range is so pathetic. They have clearly ripped the concept behind the blurbs from products like NutrientWater and others you see o/s (but screwed it up big time!). I haven’t even been bothered to try their products which just look wrong (am reffering to some green water I saw the other day). BTW What is the story with those stupid little animals walking on their website? Super dumb.
Having necessarily tried all of these to get the labels (whipping out the camera phone in a packed university cafe was too high on my dodgy-looking-dude-o-meter) I can safely say they’re nothing special. They all follow the formula of healthy + sugar = marketable faux-healthy drink.
I’m still just dumbfounded that this sort of thing makes it through hundreds of management/advertising staff? Isn’t there anyone within that company that would’ve taken a step back and realised they look like complete tools?
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