With the recent rise in interest in health, various "zero" products are emerging. "Zero" refers to products that minimize or completely eliminate elements that could negatively impact the body.
It's often used in products that maintain the taste of the food consumers already eat while eliminating calories, sugar, and alcohol. It started out as a diet for weight loss, but has now evolved into a "healthy pleasure" for a healthy lifestyle.
‘"Zero" should convey the idea that something is missing. It's not easy to remove something from a package that should strongly reflect a brand's identity.
In this article, we explore which brands have cleverly and brilliantly designed zero branding.
Pepsi has been researching zero-calorie drinks for a long time. They launched Pepsi Max in 2006, but it failed. They relaunched Pepsi Nex in 2009, but it failed to achieve significant success and was discontinued.
In early 2024, quite a long time later, as people's interest in health grew, Pepsi launched 'Pepsi Zero Sugar Lime Flavor', which added lime flavor to the existing cola, and it was a huge success, selling about 2 million units in just 40 days.
Consumers praised the lime flavor for maintaining the classic Pepsi flavor while refreshingly complementing the characteristically empty taste of Zero Sugar. Interestingly, this new flavor was developed and proposed by Lotte Chilsung Beverage, not Pepsi headquarters.
The package design uses the same black color that Pepsi has used since Max, the first zero-calorie beverage.
Before Zero, a similar product, "Diet Coke," had established its own market position. Diet Coke was focused on weight-loss customers, so its white color conveyed a light feel. Unlike this, Zero chose to convey a healthy yet delicious message rather than focusing on aesthetics.
Pepsi has removed color from its signature deep blue. The overall background color of the package is crucial for standout on the shelf, so Pepsi's iconic logo remains, with a black background. In the "Lime" series, high-contrast colors representing lime flavor are used to reduce the heavy, stout-like feel. This design persuasively conveys the intense flavor and proven efficacy.
Pepsi's Zero drink was a success, and black quickly became synonymous with zero on beverage packaging. Coca-Cola quickly followed suit, and other competing beverage brands, including Dr. Pepper and 7-Up, also launched Zero lineups. Pepsi is restructuring its brand and establishing a visual identity centered around Zero, striving to maintain its market leadership while narrowing the gap with market leader Coca-Cola.
Lotte Confectionery has launched its "Zero" series, a lineup that reflects the health trend. The Zero series maintains the familiar taste of snacks and ice cream while significantly reducing sugar content. Erythritol and maltitol are used as substitute sweeteners in place of sugar.
Zero, which actively reflected consumer feedback from its initial launch and gained immense popularity, generated sales exceeding 16 billion won in the second half of 2022 alone. Since then, it has continued to grow every year, recording sales of over 50 billion won in 2024, an increase of approximately 2,141 TP3T compared to its first year of launch. The new product "Zero Choco Pie," introduced in October of last year, sold 6 million packs (500,000 boxes) in just 50 days, achieving particularly great success in India.
The package design establishes the brand around the word "ZERO." Rather than emphasizing the appearance or taste of the food, the design emphasizes the word "ZERO" and the words "Zero Sugar/Zero Sugars." The English "ZERO" is placed large in the center, with an outlined image of the food below. The dark brown color, often used for products like cookies and chocolate, is used, so the light beige "ZERO" feels relatively light.
Choco Pie, which is very popular in India, uses a deep red color even in Zero, and the new vanilla series has a little bit of sky blue added.
It's similar to E-Mart's No Brand branding strategy. No Brand uses yellow and black packaging, with little branding elements other than color. This meticulously calculated design conveys the impression that nothing has been added to achieve a low price. This is a similar effect to what Lotte is currently aiming for with its Zero Branding.
Non-alcoholic beer refers to beer with an alcohol content of less than 0.51 TP3T. Fueled by recent health and wellness trends, it's attracting attention as a rapidly growing market worldwide. While it undergoes a similar manufacturing process to regular beer, the alcohol is removed during the fermentation process. It also has fewer calories than regular beer.
Heineken 0.0 is a pioneer in non-alcoholic beer, having ranked first in the global non-alcoholic beer market since its launch in 2017. With an alcohol content of less than 0.031 tpa3t, it is legally classified as a non-alcoholic adult beverage and is classified as a mixed drink. Other popular non-alcoholic brands include Budweiser Zero, Athletic Brewing Company, Guinness Zero, and Suntory All-Free.
Non-alcoholic beer packaging uses blue and ABV (Alcohol By Volume) to express its alcohol-free nature. Heineken, a leader in the industry, significantly reduced its brand identity, using a can design dominated by a blue background. The blue color suggests a refreshing, cool taste rather than a bitter one.
Alcohol content is often expressed intuitively. Around the world, alcoholic beverages are often legally required to express their alcohol content. This is done using a unit called ABV (Alcohol By Volume), which is expressed in 0.01 tbsp./3tbsp. Non-alcoholic beers are often labeled on the front of the package as 0.01 tbsp or 0.001 tbsp.
Expressing complex and abstract concepts isn't easy. "Healthy enjoyment" is difficult to explain in words, and even more so to express through design. The brands we've examined this time have expressed "healthy enjoyment" through strategies tailored to their needs.
Food often uses vibrant colors to evoke a sense of taste. Maintaining these characteristics while expressing subtraction is a truly challenging design. When trying to express the removal of a pre-existing element, blankness or white often comes to mind. However, this can easily be misinterpreted as the absence of anything.
Pepsi Zero, Lotte Zero, and non-alcoholic beers have transformed color from the graphic conventions consumers perceive in the existing market to give them meaning. Pepsi has made black synonymous with sugar-free soft drinks, Lotte has synonymized beige with ZERO and sweet refreshments, and Heineken has made blue synonymous with non-alcoholic. They have created meaning beyond the impression conveyed by color itself. Design, once again, is a powerful strategy that achieves remarkable results by understanding the context consumers perceive in the market and conveying rich meaning in a concise manner.
