Bringing Contemporary Craft To The Cider Market With Kirin
Problem
Our challenge was to create a new premium flavoured cider option that would drive the category forward, enfranchise males and define an ownable space for Lion in a category growing at a rapid rate.
Methods
Working hand-in-hand with ReachOut, we deployed multiple design and innovation projects to create a culture of co-design for social impact.
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We worked directly with early adopter Hipsters and experts to define the usage insights, rules of engagements and executions in iterative prototyping sessions that allowed to build and test in situ.
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We used a 4-week ‘Rapid Prototyping’ innovation that entailed deep dive consumer empathy with ‘bullseye’ consumers and four rapid liquid and brand development stages.
Outputs
Flavoured cider is a category of contradictions: it has traditional & natural, yet offers unprecedented flavours like lime & strawberry; those flavours are sweet, unchallenging and feminine, yet the packaging is large sturdy and masculine; brands have one foot in the old world and one in the worlds of contemporary fashion.
Japan is the most contradictory of all countries and Kirin is an underused brand in Australian – that’s why our answer lay in Kirin cider.
Impact
Kirin Cider is an innovation that embraces cider contradictions: graceful artwork on a jet-black bottle, established Asian fruits & flavours like Mikan and Ume used in a new cider format. During prototyping, both the liquids and designs resonated with consumers and customers alike – our first 3D mock-up won over every store-owner we showed it to.