| Felicity Murray asks
international brand designers how, in a crowded marketplace, great
packaging can set a brand apart
Style over substance?
The marketing power of packaging can never be underestimated. Good design is important whatever the product but increasingly so in the premium vodka sector. Here it is becoming a real challenge for marketers to find new ways to distinguish their brand from all the others. With mounting legislation restricting alcohol-marketing activities and budgets tightened due to the economic downturn, packaging has to work even harder to sell brands off the shelf.
On-shelf is the last chance for a brand to attract attention –
be it behind a bar or in the retail environment. What the
consumer picks up off the retail shelf is what they are happy to
display at home and offer to friends. In the on-trade environment,
it’s what they are happy being seen to be selecting from back of
the bar or displaying on their table. The target growth audience
for international vodka brands is the cocktail-drinking, fashion-conscious
youth market. And for this aspirational consumer, image is vitally
important.
The product’s packaging is also the medium that reassures and inspires the consumer. It informs them about the brand – its authenticity, heritage, provenance and quality.
Rachel Bevans, a senior consultant at the international design agency Dragon Brands, explains: “Packaging provides the opportunity to up-weight the story behind the brand. It reinforces the more emotive messages that consumers have received in other places/media, so they know what they’re looking for in the store/bar.
“But you need to attract the consumers attention in the first place and the super premium brands predominantly use super-tall, elongated bottles to stand out on shelf along with purity, clarity and ice as their design cues,” she adds.
George Riddiford, MD and partner brand design consultancy BR&Me, points out that peculiar to vodka, and a key element in its design provenance, is that it always comes from cold countries. “Pure and cold along with the nineteenth century Russian heritage, Dr Zhivago, look – is what they’re all selling,” he says. “It is interesting how the design language of vodka is very strongly in cold colours. You see lots of cold grey and cold pastels – the Grey Goose bottle
is a perfect example. “Designers have built upon the clarity
and purity by allowing plenty of opportunities to see the liquid
inside – you don’t see vodkas in dark brown glass. And because
of its target audience, there’s been a move towards more contemporary
leading edge designs, hence the rise of brands like Absolut, Grey Goose, Belvedere, X-rated and many others. What they’re doing is sourcing inspiration not just from historical Russia but from other countries where vodka is also produced and use more leading edge design factors to differentiate from the classic Smirnoff look.
“But the most fascinating vodka, I think, is Blavod (black vodka). In a world where all vodka is clear and pure, this brand owner decided to make black vodka. In common with all the other vodkas, it is using a strong visual cue to get itself noticed.”
The story goes that the man behind Blavod, Mark Dorman, was working in San Francisco when he was offered a choice of 28 vodkas in a bar, and then he was asked if he wanted his coffee black or white. This gave him the idea that drinkers could be offered black vodka. He achieved this by adding an herb called catechu that is found in southern Asia and central and east Africa. It apparently changes the colour but not the taste of the vodka.
Another vodka to break out of mould is the Diamond Standard Vodka about to be launched by Diamond Beverages, a new luxury brand company founded byRichard Wallace and based in Illinois. Retailing at US$95, this heavy but elegant, tall black bottle of vodka is embedded with a 25mm Swarovski Crystal “diamond”.
“In a word, packaging is ‘everything’ in luxury spirits brands,” says Wallace. “Yes, the product must be good. Yes, the brand name must be a good ‘call’ at the bar. Yes, you must have a good distributor to sell the brand in at retail. But, the most important element of that critical first trial by consumers is the packaging. This is the consumer's ‘badge’ that she/he wears when ordering at the bar, or serving to guests while entertaining at home. It is as important as the dress you decided to wear for the evening and the shoes to go with it. It is all about ‘how will people react to the drink/brand I decide to order?’ ‘What will they think of me?’ ‘What does this brand say about me?’”
Wallace is banking on Diamond’s target audience thinking: "Look
at that Diamond bottle - it's the most beautiful spirit bottle
I've ever seen and I’ll be all the more beautiful for drinking
it.”
Don Williams, CEO at PI Global brand ID specialists, concurs with Wallace’s sentiments about the value and power of packaging.
“Consumers buy brands because they have an emotional attachment that transcends mere functionality,” he says. “Why do consumers buy branded vodka over a far cheaper private label offer? Is it quality? Superior taste? Of course, but I'll guarantee that once they've drowned it in tonic, eight out of 10 vodka drinkers wouldn't be able to tell the difference. No, the reason they spend the extra for the brand is because it makes them feel good. It says something about them, it makes a statement, and it says I'm a Grey Goose man or I'm an Absolut woman and that these brands are part of my lifestyle– they have personalities which fit mine.
“Without a relevant and strongly differentiated brand ID, personified through the graphic and structural equities presented on pack and leveraged through communication, all you have is a bland, anonymous spirit called vodka,” he says.
So whilst the vodka category utilises some of the heritage and tradition that other spirits do, with crests and florid typography etc., it differs in that it is almost universally a clear flint glass category and probably the only spirit category that has adopted a more contemporary, minimalist and innovative approach to brand ID, driven largely by Absolut.
“Product design has been an important element of the success of Absolut,” agrees Paula Erikson at the company’s corporate communications office. “When Absolut was launched in 1979, it had to make a bold departure from the norms in vodka in order to stand out. It could not win the conventional discussion so it had to change it. In 1979, vodka was from Russia; Absolut is from Sweden. Vodka was presumed to be from potatoes; Absolut is made with winter wheat. Vodka was perceived to be a harsh, low-end spirit for shots; Absolut was a premium offering. The bottle (inspired by ancient Swedish apothecary bottles) had to communicate that this was a different proposition altogether and it still does.”
On the other hand Richard Murray of Williams Murray Hamm branding consultants believes many of the big brands have either sat on their laurels or lacked the bravery to innovate and that the more head-turning designs are now coming from challenger brands such as Effen, Vertikal and Camitz CO2, albeit design, he says, is often used only on a superficial level.
“It is interesting that brands such as Bols Genever are now also crowding the vodka market by repositioning themselves as 'the world's most authentic spirit', borrowing clear design cues from the vodka category,” says Murray. “Vodka brands will need to be careful that they don't become complacent or use style over story. Consumers often like to reason their choice of spirits, and use the brand stories as their own knowledge.”
Jonathan Ford, creative partner at Pearl Fisher design agency, believes it will be this type of big bold statement that will get brands noticed in the future.
“We don’t need another tall thin bottle on the back bar,” he says. “Bold design statements that disrupt the status quo yet still adhere to certain vodka category principles are likely to help sustain desire for the iconic and challenger brands. Look at Absolut’s recent 100 launch. A dark masculine bottle with silver-lettering which totally disrupts the clear frosted codes of vodka packaging and creates again, yet again, iconic desire over the would be pretenders.”
Chris Barber, worked at Michael Peters and Identica, before joining Dragon as creative director. At Identica he was part of the team responsible for the creation of Russian Standard, a brand that grew from a clean sheet of paper just 10 years ago into a the global success it is today.
“At the time we felt there was a gap in the market for an iconic luxury vodka from Russia,” explains Barber. “Designers are usually asked to look for the unexpected – things no one else has thought of for inspiration but actually we chose the symbols of the culture and heritage that people are familiar with - a bear and an eagle. And the enormous bell in the Kremlin was the inspiration behind the bottle shape and the masculine rugged feeling of the gunmetal on the label. Clean modern simple designs do look beautiful and attractive when you first see them but they lack a lot depth,” he adds. “Having a wonderful enriching story is so important if a brand is to stand the test of time.”
So what does a vodka pack have to do? Some say tell a story, and probably look cold and have pure and fresh credentials because this is what the consumer asks of it. But unanimously the designers agree that vodka packaging could be a lot more radical – there’s a young and open-minded target market out there and it’s continuing to grow. |
