Leading home-fragrance brand Air Wick has released an innovative new plug-in device designed to make scents last longer alongside a new range of ‘Vibrant’ fragrances. As part of a wider strategy to build a more premium layer into its range, the Air Wick Vibrant is Inspired by nature’s everlasting beauty and features a new sensory and elevated visual brand experience.
It features unique anti-fading technology to ensure a noticeable scent from the first to the last drop, for up to 60 days. Meanwhile, the new fragrances, like White Sage and Mahogany, elevate the fragrance experience with twice more essential oils than the brand’s regular range. The result is a more immersive sensory experience that encourages people to turn daily moments into special occasions.
We spoke to Air Wick’s brand experience lead Darren Morgan to learn more.
What was the brief for the rebrand?
Air Wick required a distinct and mass premium packaging solution to bring to life a new range of fragrances and a product which promises a more intense, rich scent experience.
What was your thinking behind the rebranding solution?
Air Wick’s new and unique ‘scented oil’ plug-in device and line of fragrances is part of an overarching strategy to build a more premium layer into its range. The launch allowed the brand to increase its portfolio and represent the strategic intent to regain leadership in the scented oil category.
The design had to provide desirability, demonstrating elevation in both product and performance. It also needed to communicate the perfect blend of technology and nature inspired fragrances while differentiating Vibrant from the core range. It was important that it continued to drive brand recognition through established assets.
Air Wick is about bringing people closer to nature but rooted in technological innovation. Vibrant’s scented oil plug in features anti-fading technology, a fragrance boost button, a low-refill indicator, and 2x more essential oil content than any other Air Wick product, setting it apart from the core range and its competitors.
Conveying these benefits and signalling a heightened and immersive experience was the overarching objective for the design.
What details are you most proud of and why?
Making people re-evaluate the brand and shifting people’s perception of the mass air care market as a problem solution category. Although masking odours is still a fundamental need, it shouldn’t be the only thing being offered to air care users. How do we elevate fragrance in this space?
Our homes reflect us, which is why we challenge ourselves to provide people with positive fragrance memories. It’s those small moments of effort like introducing fragrance or lighting a candle that can change an atmosphere or space - providing people with confidence, pleasure and comfort.
What visual influences fuelled your solution?
Air Wick wanted to extend its customer base by adding a premium line to its range, with a stand-out and sensorial visual design. The new launch needed to speak to people’s growing expectation of more personalised and immersive experiences, driven by conscious, tech-driven lifestyles. It also wanted to address consumers’ wish for more continuous, bespoke scent that goes beyond fighting odours to add a special touch to a home.
The creative brings the product’s unique benefits to life, dialling up the sensorial and premium with its intense approach to colour, imagery and typography, while also achieving stand-out through clear and distinct assets and messaging.
The colour palette instantly denotes premium, naturalness and depth. Intense black, vibrant green and gold offer a dramatic background, while secondary colours use muted, natural tones to differentiate scent variants within the range.
The key brand assets include bespoke lettering inspired by natures shapes and a golden drop to highlight the master brand logo. A beautifully crafted lock-up for the ‘2x essential oils’ claim, simple and easy-to-read typefaces and a graphic device that subtly emanates pulsating lines add further storytelling and distinction to Vibrant’s world, building a unique premium feel.
What do you hope it achieves for the brand?
In a category that predominantly deals with freshness and fragrance, visual cues tend to be light, airy and pastel, with pops of saturated colour. The Vibrant design does the opposite. It is dark, sensorial, even seductive through its unique colour palette and claims lock-up.
We hope that impact on shelf comes through clear stand-out from competitors such as Febreze and Glade, but also through an obvious elevation of this premium proposition beyond Air Wick’s core range.
The dramatic black and premium assets, such as the gold drop and bespoke Vibrant wordmark, instantly indicate something new and desirable.
Crucially, the craft that has gone into every detail of the design, from typography to layout and claims lock-up, makes sure that the unique promise, scent profiles and benefits of the product are clearly understood, creating a compelling promise of a superior and sensory brand experience.
Credit list for the work?
Thanks to the SGS Marks team in Amsterdam for the design strategy, packaging and visual and communications and DCA International for the product design, not forgetting the wider team within Reckitt across marketing, R&D, insights and analytics.
