Air Wick Freshmatic – redesigned

Design: Marks
Location: United Kingdom
Project Type: Produced
Client: RB
Product Launch Location: Global
Packaging Contents: Fragrance
Packaging Substrate / Materials: Box

RB reveals its newly designed Air Wick Freshmatic Automatic Spray – the newest product from the trusted Air Wick brand that neutralises odours and fills homes with continuous fresh fragrance through regular sprays.

An Appealing Transformation
RB partnered with one of the world’s leading product design and development consultancy DCA to transform the device, with the redesign of shape (also resulting in a 17.2% reduction of plastic) with softer curves and the inclusion of a blossoming effect with the spray hole integrated into this. DCA was also able to make it more attractive to customers in the redesign by reducing the number of batteries required from two to one. The redesign follows in-depth customer research.

Continuous Freshness
Global design agency Marks worked with RB to bring the new design to life through packaging. Taking the theme ‘continuous freshness’ to capture the new fragrance and odour-neutralising technology, Marks distilled the pre-existing visual iterations into a simple, easy to understand design, while letting the new device take centre stage through an enlarged pack window.

Bold and impactful
The redesign retains the bold, impactful colours familiar to existing customers and further simplifies the layout to ensure it communicates clearly and achieves shelf stand-out.

Clean and unfussy graphic language speaks to the idea of purity and odour-neutralising technology and each fragrance is illustrated on pack for quick communication with associated colour palette for easy navigation.

A successful redesign
Global design strategy director of RB, Jos Harrison says: “Our redesign is the result of listening to customers and designing something that they truly want. It’s also the perfect example of our agencies working together across every touch point to deliver a really exciting new variant.”

RB’s Freshmatic Marketer David Bermejo added: “Understanding our customer’s desires for the redesign was essential. The device has always delivered in terms of fragrance over a long period, but the new design allows the product to take centre-stage in the home environment, something to be proudly displayed, not hidden away.

“Reducing the amount of plastic is also hugely positive and part of our ambition to make the device more responsible. This has also reduced the total shipping weight by 28.9%, which significantly reduces CO2 emissions and the consumption of fossil fuels for shipping.”

Air Wick Freshmatic Automatic Spray launches across Europe this summer and in the USA in the second half of the year.

What’s Unique?
The new refills use the clean, graphic language of the device packaging to create a range of simple, colour-coded ‘frames’ that hero the light, fresh and inspiring imagery to drive home the idea of quality fragrance.