Anyone who watched TV in the early 2000s probably remembers the commercial in which the Fantanas ask an essential question: “Wanta Fanta? Don’t you wanna?” Earlier this year, though, it seemed the answer among consumers was…not really.
“Fanta was one of the [Coca-Cola brands] that felt like it had gotten dusty and had been a bit forgotten about,” Lisa Smith, executive creative director at Jones Knowles Ritchie, told us.
That can be an indication that it’s time for a rebrand, so earlier this year, Smith and her team at JKR worked with Coca-Cola to bring Fanta into the 2020s, creating the brand’s first uniform identity that has now rolled out worldwide.
Soda, meet pop
Rapha Abreu, global VP of design at Coca-Cola, told Dezeen that the goal with Fanta’s rebrand, which followed a 2022 refresh of sister brand Sprite, was to make Fanta more playful while also reaching an older audience. With that aim in mind, Abreu turned to JKR, which he had previously worked with on the Burger King rebrand while he was at Restaurant Brands International, Smith said.
Right away, Smith noticed that the old brand identity had “two different looks and feels globally,” one for the US brand and another for other markets, as well as the use of an orange leaf in the logo, which could lead people to believe that all flavors had orange in them.
“There were actually business imperatives around unifying and getting all the markets on the same page and then also overcoming that strong predominance of orange,” Smith said.
As a result, the orange leaf had to go. Another thing that demanded attention? The cut-out, construction paper–like typeface.
“It felt very juvenile and it was sort of aging them down, when really…we needed to age up and think more of young adults and the visual language that will be right for them,” Smith said.
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What inspired the new look, she said, was the idea of a “pop of Fanta.” That meant brighter and more varied colors, while keeping the overall look streamlined. In the end, she said the team decided to “tidy up” the typeface rather than scrapping it altogether, and put the new logo against a different shade of blue.
“We wanted to create a core iconic color so that no matter what flavor, there was contrast in that packaging sitting on that core color,” Smith said.
To bring the pop of Fanta look to life, she said the team leaned into movement and expression, like dancing and running, in the lifestyle photography and illustrations that accompanied the rebrand roll-out.
Don’t you wanna?
Smith said that JKR and Coca-Cola ran consumer tests to help inform the final look, making sure that the “indulgent flavor,” as well as the expressive brand identity they were trying to create, came through in the new design.
Since the new brand identity rolled out in April, Smith said Fanta is pursuing limited-time offers and partnerships, and so far, the reception to the rebrand “has been pretty amazing.”
“I was in Shanghai recently, and it was everywhere, so it’s really exciting to see how it’s coming to life globally,” Smith said.
Overall, when it comes to rebranding brands like Fanta, which has been around for more than 80 years, Smith said it is important to “not to throw everything out with the bathwater,” but rather “amplify what’s special about them” and go from there.
“We want them to be more themselves than they could ever imagine,” she said.