PACKAGING DESIGN & SOLUTIONS: LUXURY Harrods’ branded ranges
have seen the sales in their food halls grow by 162 per cent as the packaging is designed to offer both indulgence and ethnicity, meeting the needs of a wide
range of customers including luxury seeking tourists
know that there’s a shift to eating in. Many have discovered that you can have a great and indulgent evening in for a fraction of the cost of eating out. Look at the shift of beer drinking from pubs to home consumption – we can all do the maths and consumers are increasingly canny about value now. Every retailer is working on their restaurant/bistro collection of indulgent meals, some with more success than others, in their attempt to provide what we need and want. And it’s not just food. Laithwaites have built a strong business out of home delivery of wine. Table decorations and candles are taking more shelf space. • Ego gifting. We all have egos and there are great opportunities to profit from markets that set out to flatter. It only succeeds, however, if the aura round the offer is powerful. Think Fortnum’s, then think Aldi. When you buy a Jaguar or
Porsche, for example, you don’t just get a good car; you become part of the club. Car manufacturers have been slow to exploit this but the emergence of Drivers’ Clubs and branded merchandise has been very effective in creating a sense of belonging and ego satisfaction. And, for the lesser mortals, there is the knowledge that, if you can’t afford the car, you can, at least, get the sunglasses. Sad, I know, but that’s what ego branding is about. Apple are masters of this. It’s the
TYPES OF GIFTING It is, first of all, very important, to understand gifting if you want your company to head towards a luxury market. There are, believe it or not, different types of gifting and understanding these will help you to design packaging which really hits the nail on the head. • Self gifting. A small compensatory gift that will ease the pain when you can’t go out to dinner, can’t buy that dress, have to shop carefully. The DVD, the indulgent soap, chocolates, a computer game, flowers. There are many who would argue that these have become virtual necessities to get them through the week. • Home gifting. You only have to look at the increasingly desperate two for one offers from the restaurant chains to
logic that justifies the iPad, the nicest bit of kit that we don’t actually need. And, yes, I’m already on my second. This translates, via wine, back into grocery brands that generate a
sense of connoisseurship, through provenance or artisan values. • Tourist gifting. Tourists are people and many of those people have taste. And money. With the weaker pound and the increase in BRIC tourists, there are great opportunities to create something definitively British but classy. I just wish someone would tell the 2012 Olympic shop. The red bus, the pillar box, the
snowstorm with William and Kate stranded in the middle still, unfortunately, have a role. But Britain, England, London and many of our major cities and rural
mystery and revelation about the packaging. All of this, of course, needs to be founded in the basics of good and thorough marketing. Firstly, a great, distinctive product; luxury packaging is not luxury if it’s just a copy of something else. That’s all it is, a copy. Then a clear understanding of whom you are targeting, their habits, preferences, behaviour. Without this, you are just yodelling into a void. And great design that absolutely captures, again in a unique way, the emotional connection between product and consumer.
“There is, of course, a sliding scale of luxury. It is often said that today’s luxury is tomorrow’s necessity, though it remains to be seen whether that cliché will go into reverse in the next few years”
areas have values that need to be defined and brought alive through quality brands. Harrods understand this. Their
branded ranges offer levels of indulgence and ethnicity that meet the needs of a very wide range of customers and they have seen sales growth of their food halls range of 162 per cent since it was refocused.
IT IS PERSONAL The key to success in all these areas is to remember that it’s personal - between you and the customer, between the customer and the recipient. There’s the quality of service, the sense that a product comes from a person, not a factory, product delivery that lives up to its promise, a sense of
OTHER ISSUES There is one other element that is all too often missed and that is to have great connections to the consumer, through packaging as well as other factors. In spite of the rapid rise in online sales, this is still and is likely to remain through the big retailers. The clever operators in this area don’t wait until the brand is completed and perfectly packaged before talking to retailers. They include the retailer in the journey, making them partners, understanding their needs and ensuring an interest in the final proposition - packaging, product and all. Get all of this together and I
know, personally, that you can make a lot of money.
The fast-growing trend of eating in has seen supermarkets specialise in Gastropub and
encompass the feel of a both a home gift and a worthwhile replacement to a meal out
restaurant ranges, which in turn call for luxury packaging to
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