Ribena: A case for the defence

IPA Effectiveness Awards Case Study 2018

Ribena was losing revenues and relevance as squash sales fell and new premium soft drinks entered the market. The brand needed to regain salience and attract new young adult buyers. It took a bold step to move away from its brand heritage to prioritise the Ready to Drink (RTD) and out of home drinks opportunities. Creative emphasised the experience of tasting Ribena with a quirky colour-filled world evoked via TV, outdoor, an app, social, and experiential. Awareness, relevance and taste metrics all grew. Ribena experienced 3.4% value growth despite an 11.1% decline in the RTD category. An estimated £24.1m of incremental revenue was generated and Ribena’s master brand returned to growth from an 8.7% decline.

The progress we’ve made - in just four years - in transforming the perception of Ribena as being a squash brand for children to being a soft drink for everyone, is outstanding. Ribena is now the market leader in the RTD category, with enviable rate of sale and distribution across our core RTD flavours. Our commercial success is a case study for effective repositioning. RTD growth is being driven by the young adult audience that ‘Ribenary’ was designed to attract, and the increased perception of Ribena as a tasty, unique brand for me is everything we were hoping for when we briefed in 2014. What’s more, our Ribenary platform has conceived a truly distinctive multi-sensory world that we executed across the full consumer journey to gain stand out and drive conversion accordingly. It’s a world that has truly engaged our LRS business and our retail partners, and it’s a credit to our multi-agency project team, who have worked to bring it to life in the most compelling way, across the most relevant channels, over the past few years.

Amie Farrell, Ribena Senior Brand Manager
Lucozade Ribena Suntory