49-year-old Jacobs takes his place along former Coke creative directors Karl Lagerfield and Jean Paul Gaultier, and a launch event in London on March 11 saw him unveil his own limited edition bottles.
According to Diet Coke posts on social media site Instagram, the new bottles are only available in selected stores, including Selfridges in the UK, Colette and Charlie Birdy in France, Inno in Belgium, de Bijenkorf in The Netherlands and Stockmann in Finland.
Diet Coke said the three bottles (pictured right) were inspired by Jacobs’ “fashion journey” through the 80s, 90s and 00s, the three decades since the launch of Diet Coke.
“I was asked to do this, and I really wanted to do it,” Jacobs says in the video below. “Other designers have participated in it whom I really admire. So on all levels this was a really exciting project. I see Diet Coke as an iconic brand.”
Discussing Gaultier’s 2012 special edition bottles, Mintel global packaging analyst Benjamin Punchard told BeverageDaily.com that such tie-ups gave Coke the air of “continual reinvention, as well as being a product that’s been around for as long as anyone can remember”
“It’s saying ‘we’re hip, young and can associate with the people who are shaping the design world’. This new bottle is about leveraging that.”
Since there was only so far one could go with, say, short-run flavor variants – to head-off people exiting the carbonate category for juices and waters -- Punchard said such designer collaborations leveraged the designer’s personality to create brand buzz.
“It’s about saying ‘we are Coke and we’re associating with, say, Karl Lagerfeld, and again with Gaultier. It’s far less about the fact that he designed it [the bottle], more about the fact that he’s associated with it.”