Pepsi Max unveils lemon-lime flavour

Britvic Soft Drinks is to launch a lemon and lime Pepsi Max variant in January, and invest &£11m in repositioning and marketing the Max brand.

The new drink will be called Pepsi Max Twist, and the UK will be its testing ground. Britvic wants a larger share of the flavoured cola market and believes Pepsi Max is the brand to drive sales – the UK accounts for two-thirds of Pepsi Max’s global volume.

The flavoured cola market is now worth &£130m in the UK and takes in Coca-Cola’s Vanilla Coke and Diet Coke with Lemon, and Pepsi’s Pepsi Twist.

The company will push the “no sugar” message to the fore in Pepsi Max’s marketing and on packs with the line “maximum taste, no sugar”. The brand will also target women, a change from when it launched in 1993. Then, Pepsi Max was aimed at men who wanted a full cola flavour but no sugar and disliked the associations of a “diet” variant.

Pepsi Max Twist will be available in 330ml cans and 500ml and two-litre plastic bottles. Packaging for the Pepsi Max range will be redesigned and there will be new advertising by Abbott Mead Vickers.BBDO.

Pepsi Max Twist will be the first new product from Pepsi since the US soft drinks giant PepsiCo renewed its bottling and distribution agreement with Britvic in March (MW March 18). The last launch was Pepsi Twist in July 2002 (MW June 13, 2002). Britvic is expected to float on the stock market next year.