Assorted Canned Beverages (various Manufacturers)

Assorted canned beverages (various manufacturers)

Beverage marketers have long recognized the value of a proprietary

bottle shape when forging a brand’s identity. Coca-Cola’s familiar

contour glass bottle, the classic case in point, has become so

synonymous with the brand that its communicative oomph rivals that of

the product’s script lettering. But how does a company maintain that

sense of package-driven equity when selling its product in aluminum

cans, which don’t lend themselves to unique shapes? The answer for a

growing number of beverage marketers is simple: Feature an illustration

of the bottle on the can.

The unusual thrust of this approach – depicting one packaging

format on another packaging format – is appealing from a marketing

standpoint because it boils down a package design to pure image, pure

signifier, essentially transforming the entire package into a logotype.

The idea appears to have first hit the American beverage market in 1993,

when Coke began depicting its contour glass bottle on 12-ounce cans. The

company went further in 1997, when it began featuring the bottle

illustration on two-liter plastic bottles and on the cardboard soda cups

used at many movie theaters and fast food outlets.

So does a consumer drinking a can of Coke really connect more fully

with the product if the can features an illustration of a glass bottle?

Coke spokesman Bob Bertini thin...