Featured image for Ricola Brand Update Is As Refreshing As The Crisp Alpine Air

Ricola Brand Update Is As Refreshing As The Crisp Alpine Air

by Rudy Sanchez on 08/15/2022 | 2 Minute Read

Ricola is a Swiss-based confectioner founded in 1930, and its signature product is its soothing cough drops, made with a blend of natural herbs and menthol, exported worldwide since the 1970s. The brand has historically played to its Swiss heritage and natural ingredients, with advertising featuring Swiss tropes like mountaineers in folk clothing in nature against mountainous backdrops and an alphorn.

Ricola’s Swiss roots and natural ingredients continue to play a significant role in the brand’s recent refresh. Working with London-based design agency Lewis Moberly, Ricola’s new flip-top boxes put the iconic cough drop upfront inside a trapezoidal shape, reminiscent of plant markers. Along the top, a colored stripe contains the flavor name.

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Ricola’s slogan, “soothingly good,” is placed underneath the lozenge hero image while botanist-illustrated graphics of the herbs that make up the brand's signature blend surround the marker. For cough drops other than the original, the bottom right corner features a larger illustration of the herb responsible for the flavor. The outside of the click top carries Ricola’s recently revamped wordmark; inside, you'll find a different panoramic Alpine scene for each variety.

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“We needed to showcase our natural attributes and delightful taste properties and at the same time ensure consumers can navigate an extensive range with ease,” said Thomas P. Meier, CEO of Ricola, in a press release. “Our strategy is seamless with the new design direction, which quite simply makes Ricola more of what it is, and always has been. Staying true to the essence of the brand was very important. Ricola prompts pleasure through its affinity and commitment to nature—a brand for everyone, every day, everywhere.”

Mary Lewis, creative director for Lewis Moberly, added, “The challenge for Ricola was to ensure continuity of a heritage brand and define it as a brand of today. Ricola ticks many boxes of a successful brand, love, need, tension, and distinction. Visual communication has to project a cohesive summary.”

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Ricola’s refreshed design creates a unified visual system highlighting the brand’s use of natural herbs from Alpine fields in an approachable, attractive way. The new packaging contemporizes the brand on the shelf while focusing on Ricola’s Swiss roots and unique herbal blend.


Images courtesy of Ricola.