Turtle Wax, the 70-year-old automotive appearance products manufacturer, has undergone a rebranding initiative with the help of Berlin Packaging. Turtle Wax wanted to bring standardization and consistency to its portfolio, featuring 10 SKUs in the Jet Black, Quick & Easy, and Performance Plus lines.

“Until recently, Turtle Wax did not have a unified packaging strategy,” explains Ann Fisher, packaging consultant at Turtle Wax. “Different SKUs even within a single package category like spray products utilized different package structures, varying shades of the company’s signature green, and disparate shapes and branding schemes adopted over time as new products lines were introduced. There was a family resemblance but no standardization of the brand.”

In its first step, Turtle Wax solicited custom design proposals for the 16, 23 and 26 oz. PET trigger bottles. Turtle Wax, whose products have been distributed in 90 countries, selected a bottle design from Berlin Packaging’s Studio One Eleven. The product has been nicknamed the “vortex bottle” for a neck and base design that features deeply angled whirlpool-like grooves. “The dynamic line work added a sense of movement to the bottle, which stood out strongly, unlike any of the other designs that were submitted,” says Fisher.

This project generated material reduction advantages because of Berlin’s decision to use Alpha Packaging as the bottle manufacturer. All three bottles incorporate 30% post-consumer PET plastic, exceeding California’s 25% PCR requirements for bottles in this size range, while also saving more than 116,000 pounds of virgin resin annually based on historical Turtle Wax sales volumes.

According to Berlin Packaging, Alpha’s new lighter-weight preforms dramatically reduced resin use, yielding a 21% reduction for the 16 ounce bottle (from 43 to 34 grams) and a 19% reduction for the 26 ounce size (from 53 to 43 grams) for a total annual savings of 62,000 pounds of plastic. Fisher adds that the post-consumer PET plastic bottle is globally recognized as a safe, non-toxic, strong, lightweight, flexible material that is 100% recyclable.

The new packages utilize MWV Mixor trigger sprayers with an off-the-shelf black sprayer for the Jet Black line and a custom green sprayer for Quick & Easy and Performance Plus lines. Turtle Wax’s in-house designers developed the label design.

One of the main challenges for Turtle Wax and Berlin Packaging involved the adjustment of an established brand. Many customers are used to a specific look, and this had to be taken into account. “It is no small feat to take a best-known brand in need of a packaging re-stage and tie the entire line together with unifying visual language,” says Fisher. “Until this innovative work was completed, the 70-year-old Turtle Wax brand had many SKUs utilizing different package structures, varying shades of the company’s signature green, and disparate shapes and branding architectures adopted over time as new products and lines were introduced. There was a family resemblance, but nothing more. It took thoughtful planning and some real attention to detail throughout this project to unify the brand completely.

The product re-launch was met with positive feedback, leading Alpha to build 12, 20 and 64 ounce molds with the same design to house additional SKUs. “The new bottle design has instantly differentiated the package on the shelf, and the establishment of a consistent branding architecture across the complete line of products appeals more strongly to the male demographic,” adds Fisher. “It also aids in product selection through enhanced clarity of project-specificity. The newly redesigned bottles are now recognized as the Turtle Wax family of products, dominating in the aisle and on the shelf, with ‘Turtle Wax green’ forming a wall of recognizable products and rationalizing merchandising across categories.”