There is now reason to smile, a reason to cheer.
Landor Associates have completed the redesign for Cheer Detergent, a Proctor & Gamble brand sold in the USA and Canada. The 3rd new design in 4 years launched in the summer of 2011.
I'm now a father and at the age of 31 have come to realise that you have to wash your clothes, and wash them more than once a month. From my detailed understanding cleaning detergents, powders and liquids serve 2 or maybe 3 purposes; To clean, to protect colour and to help the environment by working at cooler temperatures.
It is very refreshing therefore to see a brand embrace a core purpose of its category. Cheer have aligned their positioning to focus on colour with the strapline 'Stay Colourful' and a media campaign called 'We dig colour'
"We dig color. It’s our passion. It’s our reason for being. We love every gorgeous shade. What’s not to love? Color is a language that speaks without words. It can scream without raising its voice. Color can unite us and it also can set us apart in a sea of sameness. It’s a tool that shows the world who we really are. Color is beautiful and striking and vibrant and all sorts of other words that mean awesome to look at. It is a powerful and precious thing. We dig color because it makes the world, well, more colorful."
I love brands that are clean, crisp, single minded, transparent and ownable.
Landor have perfectly executed all of these points. The structure is dynamic, yet highly finessed which enables the modern label to sit comfortably in pride of place, a move on from the previous structure that was rooted in 'bulk buy' territory. The dark navy creates a secondary tier to reinforce the importance of colour and pulls your eye direct and centre to the label.
The tear drop has been replaced by a droplet which stands upright and proud, it is no longer drooping off to the right, which I always felt evoked emotional cues such as sadness and pain.
The colour gamut/chart is a common sight in the design industry, it is a stroke of genius however to make it perfectly relevant and given a new meaning in the eye of the consumer. I would expect an array of so many colours to create a messy kaleidoscope of design but they work in unison with the typeface. The typeface needed to be simplistic, printing navy on white keeps it clean and slanting the letter 'e' has made it ownable. I believe that by incorporating the colour chart Cheer will now be perceived as the category experts for colour.
My only concern is how it prints in four colours - do you lose the vibrancy of colour?
The rest of the range is a succession of disappointments.
The 'Free & Gentle' should be softer and more feminine but Landor are way off the mark, the white bottle with white out logo is too recessive and too off brand. It really pains me when logo colors change across the range. The logo is navy on white not white out of light blue. Which is exactly the same issue I have with the 'For Darks' bottle which now has white out on mid tone blue.
The powder carton is back on brand with the core range but the execution doesn't live up to it's bottle counterpart. The droplet doesn't sit comfortably in a square box.
Overall this is such a great redesign. I hope the consumer see's this as an everyday brand, the design is so polished that there is a chance an assumption will be made that it is only for your best clobber and not day to day smalls.
Hip Hip Hooray, Hip Hip Hooray, Hip Hip Hooray
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