Wish-Bone bottles are 'puttin' on the spritz'

Developed to address consumers' desire for "more control over the way they dress their salads," according to Matthew McCarthy, senior brand development manager for Wish-Bone, Unilever of Englewood Cliffs, NJ, has debuted its dainty, go-anywhere, Wish-Bone® Salad Spritzers™. Available in three vinaigrette varieties—Balsamic Breeze, Italian and Red Wine Mist—the 7-oz, sprayable dressings come in a custom-designed bottle with a trigger sprayer that was engineered in tandem with the dressing formulations to provide the best flow through the bottle.

Elegant and sophisticated, the bottles' offset-printed (soon to be gravure) polyethylene terephthalate glycol shrink-sleeve labels from Fort Dearborn Co. (www.fortdearborn.com) set the stage for this new dressing category. Graphics for the richly colored labels, designed in-house, provide almost a theatrical approach, says Sharon Reiter Lindberg, design manager, Hellman's & Wish-Bone, Unilever Visual Branding Center, with a "curtain of lettuce, and the way that the black is presented, as well as illustrations showing off the flavor intent inside."

The bottles, which curve in dramatically at the neck, provide a considerable challenge to shrink-sleeve labeling, Lindberg adds. The high-density polyethylene bottles, supplied by Silgan (www.silgan.com), are opaque white, to provide the best protection for the dressing inside. The spritzers were introduced in early March for an average retail price of $2.79.