Refreshing Tuborg Squash with a Misfits mindset and a hint of nostalgia
How a refresh of the Tuborg Squash ad from the 90s turned into one of the best performing ads of 2024.
Carlsberg has been increasing its focus on soft drinks in recent years in response to consumers trending towards nonalcoholic options. With this strategy came the need to revive one of Carlsberg’s largest and oldest soft drinks, Tuborg Squash, with new flavour variants, updated pack design and a fresh creative campaign. The classic Tuborg Squash Orange was launched almost 90 years ago in 1936 and is a well known and loved brand in Denmark, making this update a challenging balancing act.
The research journey began with assessing the position of Tuborg Squash in the market which found that the brand is strongly associated with being “Danish”, “nostalgic” and connected to “childhood memories”. It was however seen as oldfashioned and retro, partly due to a strong connection to a successful advertising campaign from the 90’s featuring Danish comedian Finn Nørbygaard and his trouble to pronounce the brand name “Squash”.
The conclusions from the first stages of research suggested that the main challenge would be to modernize and update the brand without losing the sense of heritage and childhood memories, while moving away from the old-fashioned and retro perceptions. The updated pack design evokes the desired image of Danishness, modern and quality and was seen as less old-fashioned. It was important for the advertising campaign to be true to the Tuborg Squash brand DNA but in a contemporary context.
The first step of communication testing came in the form of an early-stage screening test to validate a “winning” route out of two options. One of the routes leveraged the comedian and joke from the Tuborg Squash ad campaign from the 90’s and was the clear winner. With this insight Tuborg Squash and the agency went into production for the final ad.
The final product is a case of an exceptionally well-executed ad that hits all the right notes and lands perfectly with multiple target groups. It is a true Misfit ad!
Thank you to the Ipsos team for being part of the creative process and for all the guidance and advice you brought, which is very much appreciated from me and also the creative agency. It brought a lot to the end-result so you are a big part of this and the good results we have in the final execution.
- Allan Aagaard Jensen, Brand Manager of Tuborg Squash
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