This piece is on the repositioning of the bubbly, orange, glucose drink, that is Lucozade. From when Lucozade was first launched in 1927 as a medicinal home remedy by Beechams it has now become a highly successful soft drinks product. In 1960 Beechams released its first advertisement for Lucozade showing to the large audience that their product was a quick cure for the ill, Lucozade was shown to be a fast, long lasting, effective way of giving them energy to fight their illness. There was a decline in sales in the seventies due to the improvements in health care, NHS and other hospital improvements.
Beechams repositioned its brand and changed its whole target audience, although they still continued to sell the original Lucozade product. This was a huge risk, which luckily for them paid off. Lucozade was advertised with a very successful athlete to appeal to a wide, sports orientated audience. They also produced a new smaller, portable bottle to accompany the sports feel. This was a great tactical move to advertise Lucozade with a gold medallist in the Olympics, at a time when sport was becoming an important part in peoples’ lives. With people not only getting involved in sports but also watching it on television as the companies bought the right to view and film the events.
As time went on people’s interest changed again with new technology being introduced. So in order to keep a wide customer interest Lucozade had to change its image and broaden its appeal to the public again in 1999. This time they used the borrowed interest of Lara Croft, the computer generated female action hero. This was another huge risk, because it’s hard to judge how long she will appeal to the public. Nevertheless they changed the target market to targeting the computer audience as well as the young female and also the male audience. They gave her enlarged female characteristics, and a fit active body with features they could work with like her eyes. However they still kept the same idea of the drink giving the consumer energy. So the product would still appeal to the sports audience, but they have expanded the amount of people that would buy the product.
I will now focus on the three main adverts in which the product was repositioned. The first advertisement is about a young boy who is in bed recovering from being ill and he is given the Lucozade drink by his mother. The director has chosen a typical 1960 family so that more people can relate to it and hopefully buy or use the drink. The editing is done at a slow pace; with mainly mid and close shots being used to give a very close feel with the advert and real life. The mother is a stereotypical housewife, who has been chosen because the main target audience is the housewife. It would have been the wife that did the shopping, cleaning and caring for the family and she would also be the one that would give the Lucozade to her children.
The young girl who is between three to six years old looks angelic, like a perfect little girl, to give the an impression of a happy and loving family and it also gives an image of family perfection. The boy is shown as energetic and active, even though he is supposed to be recovering from being ill because they did not want to associate negative impressions with the product and keep the focus on people getting better. The boy is seen drinking the Lucozade, which gives the impression that Lucozade has helped him to recover and has given him energy and made him active, as he is banging his drum and rolling around.
The advertisement is located in a normal young boy’s bedroom that looks as if it has been lived in, so as to not alienate the audience by making it seem too tidy. The director has chosen the bedroom because it is where individuals spend most of their time when they are ill. The advertisement starts with the boy dressed in his pyjamas in bed and you see his little sister dressed in normal clothes giving her brother a get-well card, which she has made herself. There is a voice over, which could arguably be the father figure. He says ” Sally says get well in her own way”. This emphasises that the boy is recovering from illness and also that there is a loving family relationship. The boy thanks her and then tries looking for his drum. The drum set is a symbol of energy and is continually used throughout the advertisement. He eventually finds them and starts beating the drum. There is another voice over saying “But you know nothing says ‘get better’ soon better than Lucozade.”
The mother is then shown for the first time, she interrupts him and takes him into a new room where she pours him a glass of Lucozade. There is an extreme close up of the glucose drink in the next shot. He is now back in his room playing the drum, when the mother walks in and says “come on noisy” and hands him the glass of Lucozade. He stops drumming after her words and takes a large sip of the drink and looks back at his mum lovingly. A voice over cuts in and says ” He’s well on the mend now.” There is a shot of the drums being left and the narrator says with “And when he wouldn’t eat, Lucozade gave him energy to help him get there.” The boy with his mother behind him hits the Lucozade bottle instead of his drum, and the narrator finishes with, “Yes Lucozade, Lucozade aids recovery.”
