Main Project: Lea & Perrins

Brief
Create a sustainable re-design of the Lea & Perrins Worcester sauce bottles.

Required brief deliverables
Attract a new generation of Lea & Perrins users (without alienating the current, older market) through educating them of exciting ways to use Lea & Perrins in everyday dishes. You must use innovative sustainable packaging designs, materials and considerations in your final solutions.

Design objectives

• Create a packaging design that is attractive to the 20-35 year old age group
• Inspire people to use the product in their everyday cooking
• Made as sustainable as possible, adhering to the Heinz Corporate social responsibility guidelines

Design mandatories

• Retain the proud orange and black branding
• Retain the iconic bottle design
• Keep the original and genuine feel of the product

Design considerations

• Great 'shelf stand-out'
• Attach elements to the bottle such as recipe cards
• Alternate bottle materials to be explored
• Themes of refill, recyclability and bio-materials should be considered

Strategic target

Cooks who are relatively confident in the kitchen but are looking for new, easy ways to jazz up their repertoire of recipes

Primary target

New consumers to the Lea & Perrins brand

What do we want them to think and do?

'I couldn't do without my bottle of Lea & Perrins in the kitchen. It's such a versatile ingredient and a great way of transforming the everyday food I cook.'

The Product:

Lea & Perrins produce Worcestershire Sauce, which was first created by chemists John Wheeley Lea and William Henry Perrins of Worcester. They have created the sauce to a similar closely guarded recipe ever since, in the same factory that Lea and Perrins built in 1897. In 1906 the High Court declared that only Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce may be called 'Original and Genuine'. Over the years the company has been aligned with HP Sauce, the Danone Group and is now owned by Heinz. Currently the sales of Worcestershire sauce are in decline, with Heinz losing 8.3% a year and 55% of sales coming from households with no children, inspiring Lea & Perrins to reach out to a younger audience.

They must now comply to the Heinz Corporate Social Responsibility Guidelines which are reducing waste across the board, such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions, solid waste, energy consumption and water consumption.

Historical advertising:

 

Lea & Perrins advert, 1900

This advertisement shows the traditions of the company, with their product dating back over a century and able to describe itself as 'Original and Genuine', possibly their main selling point. To this day the company retain a traditional and upmarket style with their packaging and advertising, but this may be a factor in losing the younger market.

A more recent advertisment encouraging people to add the sauce to more recipes

One strategy they used to try and attract new markets was in these poster advertisements encouraging people to use the product in modern and worldwide cuisine, with taglines such as 'LEAsagne', 'ChiLEA Con Carne' and 'BoLEAgnese'. However, they retained the Victorian style within the publications.

A similar advert encouraging people to experiment with Lea & Perrins

Recently in advertising it seems that Lea & Perrins have been trying to reach out to new audiences and broaden peoples' tastes. Younger generations seem to experiment more with cooking and are open to influences from around the world, and these adverts tap into that by giving them a Lea & Perrins twist.

Lea & Perrins today:

The shape of the bottle is seen as iconic, as is the orange and black colour scheme and so they don't want to change those components of the design. However, the label is very traditional-looking which ties into their tagline 'the Original and Genuine', and in order to reach out to younger audiences this is the aspect that they are open to changing, with a view to environmental concerns.