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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