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Designand Packaging in Wines and Spirits

1 Introduction

Wine and spirit packaging has a large number of elementswhich affect the overall design. These are:

• bottle shape,size, colour and material
• winebox colour,graphics and carrying, opening and pouring mechanisms
• labelling, byadhesive label, on-bottle printing, shrink-wrap bottle cover and wineboxprinting
• bottle stopperssuch as screw cap or cork (made of cork or plastic) held in place with wire orwith a wax seal and/or lead or foil capsule
• presentation boxor tin for bottle
• casing formultiple bottles such as Bailey's Minis

Packaging's functions can be divided into three maincategories: protection, convenience and communication.The protective aspect is to prevent damage during transportation, display andpurchase, to prevent deterioration of contents and to reduce the likelihood oftampering. Convenience covers the functionality of the packaging - how it isopened and used e.g. opening a perforated section of a wine box to extract atap. Communication includes practical labelling of the product, what it doesand its specifications (often legally required) plus elements of brandpersonality and aesthetics to attract the attention of the target market. Theelements of packaging often fall into all three categories simultaneously:e.g.vintage Famous Grouse whisky can be purchased in a decorative presentation tinwhich has aesthetic qualities, communicates details of the contents, has afunctional lid and protects the bottle inside with a corrugated cardboardlining. Many of the elements of packaging demonstrate similar multiplefunctions.

2 The Importance of Designand Packaging

All elements of packaging and design contribute towardsbrand, which represents the image or even perceived 'personality' of a product.Brand can be defined as

a name, term, sign, symbol ordesign, or a combination of these, intended to identify the goods or servicesof one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those ofcompetitors.

However, the activity of branding goes further than this:

a brand is a complex symbolThechallenge of branding is to develop a deep set of meanings or associations forthe brand.

A survey of wines and spirits reveals certain trends amongdifferent categories of product:

Straight-sided wine bottles identifywines from France or Italy; squat, bell-shaped bottles represent somePortuguese wines; tall, tapered bottles suggest wines that come from Germanregions.

Characteristics such as these draw a consumer towards adisplay from a distance: the shape of the bottle can give clues to its contentswithout being close enough to read the label. With a huge array of wines andspirits competing with each other in licensed and non-licensed outlets, everyaspect of package and design offers the chance to stand out againstcompetition, and the different elements identify a product to consumers withoutthe time or inclination to read many labels.

Patterns can be seen in shop displays: plastic bottles fortable wine, but never for mid-range or premium wines; eclectic design forspirits but far more consistency of packaging amongst wines; presentation tinsand boxes for premium whiskys and cognacs, and occasionally champagnes, butrarely for other wines and spirits.

Packaging design, although flexible, is subject to thesetypes of conventions. For example, corks are associated with premium wines andscrew top caps with Lambrini, a budget wine. Some mid-range and premium wineproducers have begun to use screw top caps, but a survey by Wine Intelligencefound that 60% of the 1150 subjects disliked wines having screw caps,even though the bottles are easier to open and close, flavour is as good andcorked wines are avoided. This shows that a logical approach to functionalitycan affect brand perception: the cork is not just a closure but an element ofthe brand. However, 250ml bottles of wine almost always have screwtop caps. Acork is impractical, as many of these bottles are sold at stations and consumedon trains, where a traveller rarely carries a corkscrew: the dislike of screwtops is overridden by other priorities.

Other elements of packaging have functional and aestheticaspects. Wine bottles are often clear so that the clarity of the wine can beseen. In some kinds of wine, there should be no sediment, so clear glass allowsthe purchaser to check this,but visibility of the product could also be considered an aesthetic quality ofthe packaging.

3 Options for Design andPackaging

By looking at the range of designs adopted by various brands,some of the many design options can be considered in the context of brandingand consumer influence.

Malibu uses white and brown, the same colours as a coconut(it is a coconut and rum mix), and white covers the entire bottle, which ismore eye-catching than a stick-on label (the white bottle is part of theregistered trademark). There is a distinctive palm tree logo to evoke theCaribbean. Although the drink has been made since 1893, the lettering andclean, minimal design elements are modern, creating a contemporary brand imagerather than one of a traditional drink.

European wine labelling operates to a set of conventions. Itrefers to regions, grape types and lengths of aging through specialist terms:books are available to decipher their meanings. Producers, grapes and regionslisted on the label brand the product and graphics are minimal. In contrast,New World wines are more inventive with branding. Wolf Blass wines all have thedistinctive eagle logo but with different coloured labels: black means premium,yellow means classic and red means blended. Thus the bottles are distinctiveand eyecatching to potential new customers, while existing customers can easilydifferentiate qualities. The success of New World branding has led the Frenchwine industry to reduce the information required on French wine labels.This shows the influence of a growing market of wine buyers who do notunderstand traditional French wine labelling. An Experian survey in December2005 found that more than half of wine buyers buy wine that has asimple-to-understand label.

Although some information is required by law, much of theinformation on a drink package is arbitrary. Nutritional labelling is notrequired, but does appear on certain brands promoted as lower calorie(Weightwatchers' Riesling, for example), giving a slimline brand credibility ina specific market. The Weightwatchers' white and blue branding is the same forits wine as for a whole range of grocery products, prioritising the consumer'srecognition of a diet brand rather than the wine's other qualities,differentiating it from other wines.

Product differentiation can be simple: Rosemount wines caneasily be found in displays as their square labels have been rotated to becomediamond-shaped on the bottle.

4 Re-packaging

(a) Blue Nun

Blue Nun was a popular brand in the 1970s but had acquired a'kitsch' image. A radical overhaul of the product and packaging was undertakenand the brand was relaunched in 2000. The core product, a Liebfraumilch, wasupgraded to a Qualitätswein and its sweetness reduced: the labelling on thebottle was changed to the appropriate description. The bottle, previously a taperedbrown Hock-type bottle, was changed to a blue tapered bottle with less strongassociations with German wine (which has been subject to 'wine snobbery'). Thelogo: Blue Nun in pale type on a blue background with a picture of a nun in arustic landscape, was kept. However, the brand was extended to include not justGerman Riesling but wines such as Spanish Rosé and French Merlot, creating arange of 11 wines and a ready-to-drink product, 'Slinky'. Only theQualitätswein had the rustic landscape: other products featured the same nuncontextless, or just used the blue banner with Blue Nun text.

The aim of the manufacturers was to target female customersin their late 20s wanting easy-drinking wines, who see themselves as havingmore sophisticated tastes than alcopop drinkers. The nun graphic and logosuggest the designers hoped to attract those who also drank the wine in the1970s, but the target market are unlikely to remember the product. Veryrecently, the Qualitätswein has again been rebranded, and now features a subtleline drawing of a nun's head and shoulders and the labelling 'Blue NunOriginal' (despite the recipe change). The cream label with gold borders andgold and blue print suggests the retention of the 1970s logo was failing togive the product as contemporary an edge as did its bottle: the rusticlandscape does not suggest the sophistication the target market aspires to.

However, the relaunch has been a success for the company,which now sells more units than in the 1970s - 5 million in 2005,with an annual growth rate of 11%.

(b) Beefeater Gin

Beefeater was identified by its owner, Allied Domecq, as abrand whose market was ageing. A rebranding exercise was launched to introducethe product to a younger market.

However, the brand still needed to be easily recognised byits existing market, and a radical redesign was not appropriate. The changeswere subtle: the Beefeater illustration was given a brown hair and beardinstead of the original grey, and the paper label was changed for on-bottleprinting. Printing directly to the bottle is more common in brands aimed at ayounger market - Absolut vodka, for example. The prominent 'London Distilled'text was changed to 'Dry Gin': a clear move to engage a younger audience. Theformer text implies quality to the existing, more technically-minded consumer,but with no clear explanation of what the product is, the new customer would beless likely to try it.

The new look Beefeater was launched in 2000, and UK salesincreased by 76.7% to October 2001 (compared with 0.6% for the category as awhole).Market share in Spain increased by 2% in the year to August 31 2001.However, it is not clear how much of this can be attributed to the targetmarket, and the exercise's success was described by Allied Domecq's chiefexecutive as mixed.

5 Conclusion

The difficulty of packaging alcoholic drinks for anappropriate target market is demonstrated by the Beefeater case above. It couldbe argued that the partial rather than complete success was due to the brandtrying to appeal to too many market segments, each of which responds todifferent packaging codes.

The success of the Blue Nun relaunch may perhaps beattributed to their opposite approach: targeting a very specific demographic.The recent change in logo to the line drawn nun suggests that the use of theoriginal graphic of nun and landscape was not provoking 'nostalgia' buying byBlue Nun drinkers from the 70s, and for younger consumers unaware of theproduct's history, the logo offered little to identify with.

For successful packaging, the producer of alcoholic beveragesmust be aware of:

• subtle codescontributing to branding: e.g. the picture of Queen Victoria, reference toBombay and copperplate text on a Bombay Sapphire Gin label infer Victoriancolonialism, with grand living in exotic, warm locations while preservingelements of Britishness, while Beefeater gin shows the Beefeater, a more lowlycharacter than Queen Victoria. The implications are that Bombay Sapphireacquires the image of a more premium product.
• practicalconsiderations of functionality: e.g. will the bottle open and dispensewell-preserved contents for the purchaser?
• changes in thedrinks market: e.g. French response of changing labelling requirements toappeal to a growing market with limited wine expertise.
• target marketaspirations: seen in the most recent changes to the Blue Nun Qualitätsweinlabel.

The number of competing products means that errors ofjudgement can compromise sales: the repackaging cases in section four - withBlue Nun undertaking further rebranding and the Beefeater's repositioning stillunder question, suggest that the original rebranding could have been moreeffective. Despite the experience and resources of the brands' owners, bothbrands could achieve more, underlining the challenges for designers andmarketers.

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