Brand
A refreshed visual world brought back some of WKD’s most distinctive characteristics, while modernising them for today’s audience.
01 / Case studyWKD · SHS Drinks
Rebuilding
relevance.
As Marketing Director, I led the repositioning and creative transformation of WKD—connecting Gen Z insight, brand strategy, portfolio and activation to return an iconic drinks brand to growth.
Brand transformationStrategyCreative platformPortfolioActivationLeadership
WKD is one of the UK’s best-known RTD brands, with almost 30 years of history. But awareness wasn’t translating into sustained growth or a strong connection with a new generation of 18 to 24-year-olds.
Marketing had become reliant on major sponsorships: WKD was borrowing somebody else’s cultural relevance rather than creating its own.
The opportunity wasn’t to reinvent what WKD stood for. It was to make WKD feel unmistakably like WKD again, for a new generation.
Famous, but not
relevant enough.
WKD had recognition, distribution and distinctive assets, but wasn’t converting those advantages into momentum.
We needed to rebuild the brand around today’s 18 to 24-year-old drinker and give the organisation a clearer platform for growth—challenging where we invested, how we communicated and the partnerships we relied upon.
Stop borrowing relevance.
Start creating it.
We commissioned new consumer work with Kantar to better understand Gen Z, their attitudes, behaviours and relationship with WKD. It helped expose something important.
WKD didn’t need to behave like a new brand. There was equity in its irreverence, humour, colour, sociability and refusal to take itself too seriously. The opportunity was to rediscover those qualities and reinterpret them for today’s audience.
That led us back to one of WKD’s strongest historical ideas: Have you got a WKD side?
A small change in language, but a much bigger change in attitude. Less advertising line. More provocation.
Before execution,
define the feeling.
The mood film translated the strategy into energy, attitude and cultural texture—giving the team and agency partners a shared sense of what a modern WKD side should feel like.
From strategy
to execution.
As Marketing Director, I led the wider repositioning and transformation of WKD, working with the brand team and a new agency ecosystem.
The work was delivered as a genuine team effort. Brand, commercial, customer marketing and sales colleagues helped turn the positioning into portfolio and customer choices, while specialist creative, social and activation partners built one connected expression of the idea. My role was to set the direction, create the conditions for strong work and keep every contributor moving towards the same commercial outcome.
- 01Set the strategic direction and defined the growth challenge
- 02Used new Gen Z insight to reshape the approach
- 03Moved investment away from reliance on major sponsorship
- 04Leading the return and reinvention of Got a WKD Side?
- 05Built a new agency ecosystem across creative, social and activation
- 06Led the refreshed identity, voice and communications system
- 07Connected media, social, experiential and customer activation around one platform
- 08Linked portfolio and format development to the strategy
- 09Turned the strategy into a joined-up commercial plan
The intention was not simply to produce better advertising. It was to create a stronger brand system.
One idea.
Everywhere.
We rebuilt WKD around a much more coherent expression of the brand.
Creative
Got a WKD Side? became the organising platform for a new generation of deliberately irreverent communications, designed to get noticed rather than disappear politely into the category.
Media
Investment moved behind WKD itself, with a much stronger combination of OOH, digital video, social, influencer and targeted activity in the brand’s heartlands.
Social
We rebuilt the social approach from the ground up, creating a distinctive WKD voice and a content engine capable of participating in culture at speed.
Students
WKD returned to deeper grassroots activation, including student brand ambassadors, sampling, Freshers activity and experiential moments designed around real student occasions.
On Trade
Rather than chasing distribution for distribution’s sake, we focused harder on visibility, activation and quality of presence within strategically important accounts and heartlands.
Portfolio
The work extended beyond communications into packaging, formats and innovation, creating a more joined-up platform for the next stage of WKD’s growth.
In culture
Built around the places and moments where younger consumers actually socialise.
Back in growth.
Rebuilding relevance.
The transformation has returned WKD to sustained value and volume growth across the portfolio and multiple channels.
The new communications ecosystem has generated tens of millions of social views and impressions through WKD’s own channels.
Awareness remains exceptionally strong, while measures of brand affinity have strengthened particularly within WKD’s heartland markets. WKD Blue also remains a leading On Trade RTD SKU in the UK.
WKD has its
own voice again.
A brand with almost 30 years of history is growing while rebuilding its relationship with the next generation of drinkers.
- Brand
- WKD
- Business
- SHS Drinks
- Role
- Marketing Director
- Creative platform
- Got a WKD Side?
- Audience
- 18 to 24-year-olds
- Agency partners
- Continuous, Coolr, Raptor and Thursday
- Disciplines
- Brand strategy, positioning, consumer insight, creative development, agency leadership, portfolio strategy, media, social, experiential, activation and commercial leadership