MARKETING BRANDBUILDER

John Blackburn, designer for some of the biggest names in the drinks business, is puzzled by brand owners’ reluctance to use icons instead of reams of verbiage. Patrick Schmitt reports

Our brandbuilder page has covered an array of products which have developed a loyal consumer following for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it’s because of a large investment in advertising, for instance Johnnie Walker, or sometimes it’s because of nothing more than niche positioning, for example the little-marketed and unique Angostura bitters.

But in both these cases, and others, it is the packaging that is closely linked to the brand’s image and success. Diageo had to change the direction of  “the striding man” on Johnnie Walker’s label to make him march forwards before embarking on the campaign “Keep Walking” with its message of progress in life. This meant updating the label on some 14,000 SKUs in 184 countries. With Angostura bitters, on the other hand, an enviable level of recognition for the product has much to do with the fact that the label doesn’t actually fit the bottle, a 180-year-old mistake, never corrected, and today providing visible basis for a memorable marketing story.

This month we thought we’d profile a drinks designer, someone who could explain the importance of these visual quirks and how to use packaging to build a brand. One such specialist is John Blackburn, founder of Blackburn’s Design, with some 30 years’ experience designing drinks labels.

For him, distinctive packaging is paramount, because, “The first sip is with the eyes.” This might be a fairly obvious point, but Blackburn is amazed that, in this increasingly visual age, few in drinks use icons on their packaging. “It surprises me how many labels are purely typography,” he says. “I stress the need for an icon for your brand. The greatest at the moment is the Nike swoosh – you don’t even need the brand name anymore. Young people are exposed to icons everywhere, be it on computers or mobile phones. Even the words they use are truncated. But go into a supermarket and you’ll see how few brands employ that sort of device.”

He takes the example of The Famous Grouse whisky. “It uses a bird mostly known for being slaughtered, but it’s different, it’s not another eagle, and it has become an icon. And like a melody that you might whistle, it is memorable. Let’s say I asked someone without much knowledge of drinks to get me a bottle of Famous Grouse from the supermarket. It’s quite likely when they got there, faced with an array of whiskies, they’d forget the name and bring back the wrong one. But if I said ‘Could you get the one with the bird on it’, I bet they would come back with The Famous Grouse. Animals are good icons for brands,” says Blackburn, citing Puma as a good example from outside the drinks industry.

Blackburn’s career was launched aged 28 when he repackaged Cockburn’s Special Reserve.

“I did a piece of packaging that appealed to myself,” he recalls. “I suppose I was the target audience. It didn’t follow convention and the brand is the leader in the popular Port sector today.”

If you are still in doubt about the ability of packaging to turn around a product’s image and increase sales, then Harveys Bristol Cream makes for a further good example. “Harveys were in trouble,” Blackburn explains, “and I was told to do something or else the company would go bust. I knew that Bristol was famous for importing Sherry in cask from Spain but also the blue colouring agent, cobalt, which gave rise to the term ‘Bristol Blue’. I cried out for Harveys to put the Sherry in a blue bottle and although everyone said ‘You can’t put it in a blue bottle, everyone will associate it with poison’, they did and its fortunes changed. After we did it, Blue Nun put their product in a blue bottle.”

Blackburn also argues, “Packaging shouldn’t be trendy, and while advertising can afford to be, packaging should be timeless. Take Coca-Cola; the script is over 100 years old but the logo is still what is was. You should design a brand that will last.”

He also advises, in the light of all the look-a-likes that emerge after any successful piece of packaging, “You need a design you can protect”. And that part can be the hardest.

© db April 2006