At SIAL Paris 2018, FoodBev’s Alex Clere spoke with Media Younce, programmes manager for marketing at RC Cola.
On stand at SIAL Paris this year, the company had row upon row of its new ‘stubbie’ cola bottle. Rooted in its heritage and history, the bottle features the portrait and signature of the brand’s founder, Claude Hatcher – and Younce believes that craft expressions like these are really important to the cola category.
“We’ve seen a lot of movement within the cola category, whether that’s going towards ‘diet’ or ‘light’ or using stevia and those kinds of sweeteners. We believe that with the authentic and the craft cola, people are searching for something that’s real, something that they can really see the identity. Our brand is since 1905, so I think that consumers will really catch a hold and really enjoy this product.”
As well as the portrait and signature of Hatcher, the bottle also features nods to the year it was founded; its home city of Columbus, Georgia; and the phrase ‘Southern Slow’ embossed across the bottle neck to drive home cues of quality, heritage and craft.
“It was really important for this to be a prominent piece of our packaging,” Younce tells us. “People want to really believe in their brands and some of the larger brands that are global… I think a lot of the trends are coming back to localised, authentic, especially in America where the colas originated.”
And, as brands flock to SIAL to secure distribution far and wide, Younce says that RC Cola is looking for something more specific for its craft iteration: “Because this is a more premium product, what we’re looking for is placement within the horeca channel. We’re looking for exclusivity, places that are more upper-end that would be able to carry this product. So we’re not looking for mass production – we’re looking for exclusivity with distributors in Europe.”
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Presented by: Alex Clere Edited by: Harriet Jachec
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