After four years on the market, a new face of vodka Svarog was unveiled, which, in addition to the improved taste that ranks it in the premium segment, caries the new product design signed by the agency Real Grupa.
The task set by the client, Badel 1862, was to give a completely new visual identity to a product that is already on the market, so it would be in-line with the new development strategy of the brand. The new design of Svarog is a concept by the creative director Albin Uršič, realized under the direction of art director Goran Pećanac.
The most important part of any solution happens before the first idea appears – with the analysis of the brief and the selection of the team that will work on the project. In Real Grupa, a full creative team always works on a project, which gives an advantage over purely design solutions. And this was what the original Svarog bottle was. The task was to offer a new packaging for the brand, which wants to be repositioned within its segment in terms of design and quality of fluid in it. The logic of a wider and long-term marketing approach requires a solution that will be more than just design. People buy a sense of belonging, a story on which a brand is based, not just a pretty bottle. Behind the successful brand there’s always an interesting story.
“Our first reaction was to drop the image of God Svarog, because characters typically provoke polarized reactions, with either strong sympathies or antipathies. Instead, we placed on the bottle the myth of the origin of the gods, namely the moment when Svarog struck a mountain top with his hammer, producing sparks from which other deities emerged. We branded this moment as the Svarog moment, and translated it into a contemporary context as one of the communication bases of the brand, geared towards the target group of urban young, clubbing oriented population. From the sparks that flew from the mountain, in addition to the gods our slogan also emerged – Uhvati iskru / Catch the spark. In order to keep the design in the local context, the mountain that is featured on the bottle are the tops of Klek,” said art director of the project Goran Pećanac.
The second phase of the project was the technical part, and was equally demanding as the shortlisted proposals for redesign were extremely challenging, because of the combination of different printing techniques (gold foil, screen printing, printing in layers on the walls of the bottle), glass processing (satin effect) and the very quality of the glass itself. Svarog was an uncompromising project in this sense, and therein lies the success of the final product design.
Agency for market communications Real Grupa operates in seven different markets in three time zones. This full service agency along with media buying and media strategy provides its clients with integrated and creative solutions, PR and event management and 24/7 partnership.
