Throughout the occasional ups and downs, Smirnoff ICE has remained a popular choice for consumers wanting a refreshing alcoholic drink. The flavored-malt-beverage space has grown in recent years, though—to say nothing of the fragmentation brought on by the ascendency of hard seltzers and ready-to-drink cocktails. With more competition than ever, Smirnoff ICE saw that it was time for a change to its package design. “We kind of looked like we've been around for 23 years,” joked Lisa Lee, brand director for the Smirnoff ICE. “It was just time. The brand needed a bit of a glow up.”

The team at Diageo (which owns Smirnoff ICE) knew the brand and understood the challenge—improving the brand’s look and feel without alienating loyal consumers. They tasked Design Bridge and Partners, the esteemed global branding agency, with the task.

“We provided a very practical and concise brief, but it was also inspirational,” recalled Hania Midura, design and visual identity director for Smirnoff ICE. “We really wanted to give Design Bridge and Partners plenty to work with.”

“It was really a dream brief,” recalled Katie Hughes, associate strategy director at Design Bridge and Partners. “And it was clear to us that, for anyone who has tried Smirnoff ICE, flavor and refreshment are the two things that immediately strike you. So everything we needed was already inside the bottle, it was just a question of how to tease out those elements. Or as we like to say, define what the brand stands for, then leverage that to make it truly stand out.”

In the past, communicating refreshment had been of paramount importance, but in today’s market—and specifically with Gen Z consumers, who are a key audience—flavor needed to take the lead. “We took the time to really understand what matters to Gen Z, and its flavor,” Lee remarked.

“Flavor is the number one driver of purchase, and we needed to make sure our design clearly communicated Smirnoff ICE’s deliciousness to consumers. We felt we could connect with the classic nature of Smirnoff ICE for our existing consumers, while also re-imagining it for a younger audience.”

Design Bridge and Partners created six concepts for the folks at Smirnoff ICE to consider, and prioritized creating some visual consistency with the parent brand, Smirnoff Vodka (a top-selling vodka around the world).

“We knew we needed a flexible system. So first we decided which fixed elements were tied to the brand, and that gave us the freedom to adapt and evolve elsewhere,” Hughes commented.

After some back and forth, one leading concept eventually emerged, and it diverged considerably from the current design. The brand had brightened the overall design considerably, shifting from a largely gray background—a motif meant to suggest the coldness of ice—to a baby-blue one that evokes a clear sky or a swimming pool. There were also two bottles (rather than just one), and the rocks glass had been removed entirely. “No one really pours Smirnoff ICE into a glass; they drink it out of the bottle, and primarily in a social setting,” Midura stated.

There were other elements on the old design that weren’t contributing to the design’s effectiveness. Shang Wu, client brand director at Design Bridge and Partners, noted that in the previous design, the ‘I’ in Ice was actually a ‘minus-one,’ which was meant to convey -1°C. 

“Not a lot of people knew what it meant, and it didn’t really make sense for markets like the United States, so we removed it,” he said. 

Many of these decisions were made easier because of the research the brand conducted. In fact, in certain areas, research helped convince the team to make choices they would have initially opposed. Take the shift from a gray background to a bright blue one—a package-defining change that initially encountered resistance.

“Because it was so different from the gray, the blue was a harder sell for us,” said Lee. “But it turned out that consumers loved the blue, and it conveyed refreshment very clearly.”

To hammer home the deliciousness of the drink, the team introduced bright, colorful imagery of fruit. On the packaging for the “Original" variety, for example, there are sizable slices of lemon and lime. In a deft move, the brand also tweaked the name of the product itself, from simply “Original” (with a small reference to lemon-lime flavoring below it) to “Original Crisp Citrus.” Together with the imagery of the fruit, this call-out helped to really highlight the taste appeal of the beverage. 

Of course, “refreshing” is also one of the top purchase drivers in the category, so the brand needed to maintain its standing in this area. The agency simply utilized new ways to communicate this, such as adding the “refreshingly cool” tag at the top of the 12-pack, including little flecks of ice, and incorporating that sky-blue background. 

“These are subtle nods to refreshment, which is already implied in the name of the product,” Wu noted. “I think there’s a fine line—if you overdo those elements, it feels overwhelming or fake. So we wanted to find that balance.”

Designalytics’ data suggests they did: Consumers were far more likely to describe the new design as “refreshing”  than the old.

Throughout the process, the teams at Smirnoff ICE and Design Bridge and Partners had in-depth conversations about particular design choices. Lee had originally viewed the project as “package design hygiene,” but her opinion changed as she began to see data showing consumers’ response to the design. “Just seeing the standout data, the purchase intent data—for me, it was hard not to feel like, ‘Wow, this isn’t just hygiene, this could be a real growth driver for the business,’” she recalled.

As it turns out, that was prescient—during the 26 weeks following the new design's launch, sales increased by 3.5% compared to the same period during the prior year—a massive achievement, considering the size of the brand.

This aligns with Designalytics’ analysis of the new and old designs: 87% of category buyers preferred to purchase the new design over the previous version. In fact, Smirnoff ICE’s result ranks in the top 5% of Designalytics’ database, which contains nearly 2,000 in-market redesigns across CPG categories to date.

The redesign’s results created a buzz throughout Diageo. “I think that the new design got people excited in the organization,” said Midura. “There was a real energy and a desire to showcase it. It was a focal point for our marketing efforts, including our social channels and TV. The design became the real star of the show.”

In fact, Lee noted that the outcome prompted the Diageo team to revisit the packaging for another one of its brands, Lone River. And for her, it validated the business impact that great design can have. “I've always been a big believer in design, but it was always important to manage expectations when launching,” she said. “This redesign has shown that design can truly be a growth driver and accelerant. Of course, you have to compliment it with the right marketing tools, but design can be very effective in helping move the needle.”