Shanghai Dynamic Fuel was an entrepreneur type of company that was founded in 2016. The initial brand was “Wake Up” botanical drink, which has superior sobriety power and appeals for its scientifically strict formula and high price performance power comparing to other similar products from Japan and Korea. For more precisely conveying the brand philosophy to its consumers, Shanghai Dynamic Fuel entrusted Existence Design to execute a complete deconstruction toward the brand’s gene, carry out a whole set of packaging design and perfectly distinguished the brand with others in the market. From investigation the emotions of our targeted objects that are between 25 to 35 years old and resided at 1 and 2nd tier cities, the result showed the group had busy social life, high drinking frequency, and recurrent hangover-caused uncomfortable feeling and tiredness after drinking. They moved forward bravely, worked hard, and were busy at social life. However, there were moments they truly hoped they can break away hangover-caused headache and tiredness at the 2nd day after drinking and can wake up to handle their works and lives as all other days.

In planning the packaging design, we aimed at consumer’s appeal for hangover emotions to carry out the overall in-depth thinking in design plan and decided to use “Be a good man everyday” as the main core value. The can body was designed to have black background with a big dashing writing, “Wake Up”, to present a main visual sense of a really waked up manly man, which also implicated a sense of transition from hangover to sobering up. The overall design extracted the lost and in-comfort from hangover and provided a sobriety power and warmly protection for consumers. The main vision break-through point lay in the function for allowing consumers to instantly recover, be full of energy and have a day just like a manly man. Aesthetics: The brand “Wake Up” wanted to transmit a timely and powerful transformation from drunk to sober up and wished the consumers can sense and feel the final effect after using the product in the most direct method. In the beginning, Existence Design used 180 ml small can as the basis and utilized its unique brand gene analysis to map out the core fundamental presentation with the calligraphic writing “Wake up”. The writing spread over the can body in large area and was embellish with scarlet seal-like writing, “Real”, which not only met alcohol consumer’s aesthetic view but also by strong visual contrast in size, perfectly covered up the drawback of undersized can in visual sense. We properly virtualized the corner design of the writing, “Wake Up”, and completed a reasonably blend of dark gridded can body and white artistic font. The ingenious design was used to appear the hazy state in between drunk and awake and remind you to wake up whenever necessary! To be awakened constantly! The application of brightly main vision successively attracted great attention regardless on the presentation of on-line store or off-line store fronts.

“Wake Up” botanical drink was officially launched in October 2017. Till now, it has completed market exploration and extended its channels mainly to on-line TMall flagship store, JD Store flagship store, and other e-merchant platforms, as well as real stores including high quality supermarket system such as Shanghai Lawson and G-Super. Currently, there is no leading brand in China’s sobriety drink market. The on-line store sales have received more than 99% good rating and consumer’s re-purchase rate is keeping at more than 15%. Consumers have been giving comments such as the design is fashion, complying with business identity, suitable for giving as a gift, having good value, etc. very often. When the product exposure was driven by on-line brand image presentation, it had more and more inquiries from offline distributors; therein distributors that came from the 1st and 2nd tier cities had the most obvious cooperation intention. To a large extent, that was benefit from the realized aesthetics value by its good packaging design. Good packaging image had made “Wake Up” stood out from market competitions with other local sobriety drinks and gradually established the strength of vivid brand distinction.

Currently, the sobriety drink market in China still is in low-developed stage. Few product categories, big quality difference, lacking of local identity brand, the conceptual awareness of sobriety drink is far behind an equal position comparing to the long-term heat of alcoholic drink market, etc., all these are current issues that cannot be ignored. Functional drink has big market capacity and growth. It is a growth driver for the whole beverage market. Consumers become to have more and more interests in functional food or drink year after year, among which detoxification is one health related issue that consumers care about the most (sober-up also means to help liver detoxify). The market position of “Wake Up” drink was set as a functional sobriety drink aims at male consumers. We penetrated into the need to ease hangover-caused unwell that were commonly seen after social gatherings at work and concentrated on providing consumers with the scientifically proved professional and high quality functional sobriety drink. After strict scientific experiments, “Wake Up” drink had explored the sober-up value of raisin tree seeds in certain concentration. It helps and enhances consumers’ ability in decomposing alcohol; hence in the next day they don’t have to wake up with hangover caused headache and tiredness. “Wake Up” had been looking for opportunities in turbulent market on one hand by its scientifically proved effective formula on the other hand by its distinctive packaging design. If we say formula is the attribution of product’s value, then packaging is the best realization of brand’s system of values.

Project Team Member: Party A: Shanghai Dynamic Fuel Co. Ltd. Person-in-Charge of the Market Department: Hsu, Meng-Ssu Planner of the Market Department: Lo, Hsiao-Tung Party B: The Existence Design Co., Ltd. Planning Supervisor: Huang, Yu-Ting, Brand Supervisor Design Supervisor: Yang, Pin-Tsan, Design Supervisor The design project for Wake Up Brand Design was mainly carried out by Existence Design’s planning team and design partners through communications with the client. The main participants included Brand Supervisor, Huang Yu-Ting, who worked with the Planning Dept. to carry out the analysis on brand’s planning ideas, and Design Supervisor, Yang Pin-Tsan, who worked with Design Dept. to work on the design’s creative thinking and visual sense elaboration. At client’s side, Wake Up team’s Planning Dept., R&D Dept., and Marketing Dept. worked on product innovation, in-depth survey on China market demand, customer feedback investigation, support of thorough market strategy evaluation, and help on the execution direction for Existence Design team to analyze overall brand design.

Effective communication is always the key for execution. In particularly, Shanghai and Taiwan have a big geographic span. In the early stage, we have been worrying about this. However, the similar company culture in both parties helped to achieve many common views easier than expected. In summary, there were four key points to implement this project well: 1. Never be driven by right or wrong. Both should honestly express their own ideas and thinking. 2. Main work was to solve real problems. Enhance efficiency and simplify processes. 3. Well utilize time by collecting fragment pieces of time. Shorten communication period but increase the communication and feedback frequencies. 4. Well use internet communication tools, such as WeChat. Therefore, at the end both parties have achieved the design’s common view to a great extent, and so the visual sense of brand’s packaging design was pixelated, concretized and through other different design manner to show a positive energy conversion from chaotic unwell to a more comfortable awaken conscious and clearly present the image of a manly man that has been aggressively strive for life after relying on this product to solve short term drunk problem. The visual presentation used black as the background and white writing to establish a strong contrast in order to stand out the brands core theme with the rough, robust, and quality dashing writing of the Chinese character “wake up”. The packaging of the “Wake Up” drink selected to use recyclable iron as the main material. After drinking the drink, consumers can easily clean and recycle the can. Also, corrugated paper was selected to be made into the packing box for 6-can packaging with only printing instead of adding extra layer of protection film. This effectively simplifies the procedures to recycle and achieve a better and more effective way to recycle.

After confirming the elements with the client, the Wake Up project was begun execution by Existence Design Team. It took about half a year to complete the execution. The execution included main items, such as preliminary pre-design conversation, brand text project planning, pre-design work, brand identity design, brand’s virtual sense positioning, extension on brand’s vision positioning, and static filming plan. Cost of the brand’s planning and design was about three million NTD.

The original intention to establish the Wake Up brand was for male consumers that are in the age between 25 to 35 years old and resided at 1st and 2nd tier cities. It targeted consumer group that has busy social life, high drinking frequency and often experiences hangover-caused unwell and tiredness at the 2nd day. Ever since Wake UP was established, as a functional sobriety drink to help consumers with better abilities in decomposing alcohol for solving hangover symptom, Wake Up has received great consumer feedback, saying that, “The Confucius said when a man reached thirty years old, he should be independent. I still have a dream, but the reality has been driving me busy. We are the people in this society that are under the most pressure. However, we still insist on the rule of paying for receiving, so we keep going forward and are busy at social works. There is nothing to stop our perseverance. However, once in a while I truly wish I don’t have to wake up from hangover-caused headache and tiredness at the 2nd day of social activities. And Wake Up sobriety drink really gives me the most positive power and support me with clear head to deal with my work after a relax in my busy life.” This project followed the company’s faith in “big capacity for functional drink market”, “high growth power”, and long development history in nations with similar culture, such as Japan and Korea, where are believed to have big market and still in fast growth stage, and started to enter into China market gradually starting from 2015. However, China market for functional drinks at the time still has not been developed yet. But from consumer surveys, we found that young Chinese drinking consumers gradually have strong demands in protecting self-health after drinking. But the corresponding market is just in the initial stage. Therefore, Shanghai Dynamic Fuel expects to penetrate into the market from here and hopes to become a national leading brand, which has clear positioning and communication, in the functional drink market.