TORONTO, -- Anthem Worldwide, a Schawk Strategic Design Company, whose integrated global network provides innovative solutions to articulate, unify and manage brand impact to create compelling and consistent brand experiences, announced the recent release of its new package design for well-known spirits brand Mike's Hard Lemonade.

Mike's Hard Lemonade is a Canadian-based corporation, with its head office in Vancouver, Canada. Mike's Hard Lemonade was launched in Canada in 1996 and is a mixture of lemonade made with real lemon juice and premium vodka.

"For the past 12 years, the marketing world has created an industry around hip, rule-breaking brand introductions," said Anne Dean, managing director of Anthem's Toronto office. "By building on the energy of this authentic and original breakthrough brand, we re-designed the packaging to strengthen the core visual equities of Mike's Hard Lemonade. This enabled the brand to realize sales lift, demonstrating the power of compelling packaging. It also reinforces the power of packaging as the ultimate consumer touchpoint. If your brand's package can engage shoppers and breaks through at shelf, it has the power to turn shoppers into buyers."

Anthem helped craft a sense of authenticity, character and individuality for Mike's Hard Lemonade by evolving and focusing on key brand equity elements, such as "A CANADIAN ORIGINAL" and the fact that Mike's Hard Lemonade is made with "ALL NATURAL FLAVOURS," which differentiate this beverage from the rest of the category. Focusing on key brand equity elements served to strengthen the connection between the familiar equities that consumers associate with the brand to new ideas that contemporize the brand. Essentially, the re-design broadened the personification of the brand by modulating the visual equities.

"In our competitive industry, speed to market is crucial," said Chris Pfeifer, Director of Marketing, Specialty Beverages, of Mark Anthony Group Inc., parent company to Mike's Hard Lemonade. "Anthem's fresh, evolutionary and contemporary design expressed the true values and character of the Mike's Hard Lemonade brand and enabled us to take this project from brief to shelf in just 16 weeks."

Continued Pfeifer: "Anthem's understanding of the core essence of the brand and key consumer insights allowed them to quickly establish credibility with the brand. Since the new design was launched, sales for these Mike's Hard Lemonade products at the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, or LCBO, have been 'outpacing our competitors' by a margin of 10 to 20 percent, most of which we attribute to the new packaging."

Added Pfeifer: "Anthem's and Schawk's holistic brand point management capabilities certainly differentiate themselves from other firms and helped to differentiate Mike's Hard Lemonade to consumers in today's crowded alcoholic beverage marketplace."

Anne Marie Pagliacci, executive vice president, managing group director of Anthem Worldwide, added, "Today our competencies are working more closely than ever to deliver the brand point management position to our clients from strategic to creative to executional. Our teams worked side by side to maintain design and brand integrity through the entire project to create a successful end result. Anthem focuses on strategic and creative excellence, while Schawk focuses on premedia executional excellence. This is what makes our brand point management positioning so powerful."

Brand point management is a powerful way of guiding brands through today's challenging environment while creating a compelling and consistent brand experience for consumers on a global scale. To gain further understanding on the important role of brand point management, please access Schawk's White Paper, "Brand Point Management: Creating Compelling and Consistent Brand Experiences" by visiting http://www.schawk.com/insights-and-work/insights/white-papers