Coming up with a great beverage for kids is hard
because you can’t just trumpet health
or great taste. You’ve got to sell it with a helping of personality, the kind that appeals to kids without
turning off parents.
There are a flood of low-sugar, fortified,
all-juice, little juice, or zero- juice
drinks, each using health as the selling point, on the market. But none of them
had the sense of fun of the fledgling brand bot, an enhanced water for kids. Its owners sought a simple
yet endearing packaging scheme so
attractive it transcends the category’s typical product claim one-upmanship.
At the heart of the scheme are a trio of adorable
critters who practically leap off
the label with their aura of fun and whimsy. Resembling the offspring from a mating of the South Park
brats with the denizens of the Boobah
Zone, Orangebot, Grapebot and
Berrybot serve as mascots for the brand,
taking a relatively simple product and infusing it with playfulness.
Beverage Spectrum spoke with the founders of bot, New Jersey
parents Brian and Cynthia “Cricket” Allen, about their little critter
creations.
Beverage Spectrum: How did you come up with the cute characters? Cricket Allen: With the characters, we
were looking at how we wanted to brand the
product. We wanted something contemporary, friendly, modern and unique, and we
thought the characters sort of stood up to those goals.
BS: Do they have
names?
Brian Allen: Berrybot, Orangebot and Grapebot
BS:
What are their personalities like?
Brian:
They each, from a personality side – they all have their endearing qualities.
Berry can fl y, and that’s really cool. Go to our Web site, and you can see they have little adventures.
Cricket: We wanted to give life to the brand beyond the bottle. On the site we
wanted them to see the dimension of the characters.
(NOTE: A trip to the site reveals that in one of
the adventures, Grapebot appears to
pass gas. In another, he removes his eyes and has them eaten by a bird. Orangebot blows up like a balloon. Hit by
a magic wand, Berrybot loses all
manner of shape and appears to melt. Perhaps they are not such endearing little imps after all.)
BS: Looks like something out of a Dali painting.
Brian: Well, they are in what’s called “bot land.”
There’s an ethereal side to it, let’s say
that. They don’t have an age. There’s
no aging.
BS: Can they, uh, reproduce
at all? Will there be more fl avors and more critters?
Cricket: The family will be growing. We’ll be introducing a new member at Expo
West. It’ll be the first new member.
BS: Do you think
the line is ready for it?
Cricket: It does become more
challenging. There’s the creative back and forth, the fl avor profi le, which we’ve
(already) had to tweak quite a bit.
BS: And what about critter
acceptance? Do you think they’ll haze the new guy?
Brian: There might be some of that, yeah. They might have a break-in period.