This year, PricewaterhouseCoopers came seventh in the Best Brands of British Origin study. PwC outranked a range of household UK names such as the BBC, Marks and Spencer and Virgin. The strength and visibility of this very typical professional services brand is not unique – all of the large professional services firms invest heavily in their brand and have done for decades. Still, there lingers some skepticism among small firms about the visual identity part of brands, and, in fact, any kind of marketing other than word-of-mouth. The fear I encounter when networking with owners of small-sized professional services firms is more or less this: “I don’t want to come across as a cheesy sales person, so I’d feel uncomfortable with a website, a fancy logotype, marketing material, anything that markets me to clients in an obvious way. My clients come to me from recommendations.”

However, you’re not afraid of branding. You’re afraid of bad branding and marketing.

This is very understandable. There are so many examples of small- to mid-sized firms which market their offering in a way that will make you cringe. Salesy, pushy and cliche-filled material, pestered with stock images of laptop carrying Ken dolls with light blue shirts. Not unlike if Gucci were to start doing the same kind of ads as a discount hardware store. Or getting into consumer telesales. Basically, you can do it the wrong way, and you can do the wrong things for your line of business. You are right to think that both will destroy your business rather than building it.

Part of the problem, I’d say, is that these firms are in the hands of branding and design consultancies that say they’re experts on every kind of business. Some have, doubtlessly, the expertise and sensitivity to “get” both the world of consumer products and the world of professional services. But others simply apply a consumer thinking to a B2B context, and then add a touch of visual conservatism to get a suitably PS look. Also, these firms have not found an agency that thinks professional services are exciting. There still exists an unfortunate view that professional services are “no fun”, in relation to consumer product brands that can be built with humourous ads, colourful packaging design and viral campaigns featuring, say, giant talking rabbits .Instead find someone who’s excited by the prospect of helping you grow your business, and who knows your line of business enough to be able to find room for creativity, in an appropriate context.

Secondly, you are building your brand the right way – a professional reputation is the foundation for the professional services brand. What the visual part of branding will add to that is mainly a form of emotional support for the potential client, who is perhaps the most frightened of any potential client. She’s about to buy something that doesn’t yet exist, is intangible, highly complex, and that she’s unlikely to be able to accurately judge the quality of. She will be unconsciously looking for clues that tell her that recommendations and your own verbal presentation are correct – you are truly professional, and you’re right for her business. Those clues are largely visual, and as a professional services provider with much fewer touchpoints than within consumer products, each clue counts.

Recently, I stayed a couple of nights at an Elite hotel. The Swedish Elite chain consists of twenty or so nice, mid-priced hotels, often charming old inner-city hotels. It’s also got an attractive and suitable, mostly black and white, brand language, done by people who obviously know what they’re doing. But. This is what a night or two at an Elite hotel leaves on the retina (well, a selection).

Not pictured: flags, plates, cups, under-bathroom-glass-paper-towels, laundry bags, pens, notepads, etc, etc.

Elite are of course not unique in this. Many service businesses whose services provide a lot of physical touchpoints – hotels, airlines, etc – put a logotype on everything they see. I understand why, but still wonder: does branding necessarily mean repeating your logotype constantly? It seems to me to be a quite dated way of doing things. Shouldn’t graphic design rather help heighten the brand experience by adding to the positive experience of the service? For example, in this case, by helping to create a welcoming atmosphere and a feeling of (mid-priced…) luxury. (You can get that in a logo, but most likely it’s more easily with other means, especially since there’s a convention of “discreet=exclusive, personal, tasteful”.) Of course there are times when a logo is very helpful on a service artifact. You want to know that the check-in kiosk is from BA if you’re flying BA. But you could still remove 1/2 of these Elite logos and still not be unsure at all of where you’re staying.

Also, the logotype is in many cases a sign of ownership. If it’s not applied with moderation, there’s a risk of the guest feeling like living in someone else’s room. Someone who’s marked all their belongings with “Property of…” before letting you move in. (Well, you shouldn’t steal hotel hangers, obviously, but that’s another issue.)

There’s also the question of standardization. You know you’re in a chain hotel, obviously, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing at all. The standard’s more predictable, etc. But in hotels that have their own atmosphere, overuse of logotypes are unnecessarily intrusive and detracts from the hotel experience. I understand the need to make your mark as a chain, but still.

Here’s a more modern way of letting your brand visually put its mark on your hotel, in a way that heightens the experience of the service. What would happen if a large hotel chain translated this way of thinking to its own brand and clientele?

In late 2008, the very successful online fashion store Net-a-Porter announced that they were launching a “discreet packaging” service – purchases could now be sent in brown paper bags, as opposed to their trademark, elegant black packaging. The e-mail informing of the new service featured the headline “You’ve been shopping – we won’t tell.”

The arrival of the so-called “Brown bag luxury” was mostly a way of simply disguising indulgent shopping – to avoid invoking envy or hostility from less fortunate neighbours and friends. But is also signaled a change in the financial crisis consumer’s mind; stepping away from ostentatious luxury. Net-a-Porter’s move was particularly interesting since their luxury packaging is credited with a part of their success – it’s an integral part of the shopping experience they provide, making it closer to real life boutique shopping.

Mainly, the redefinition of luxury is not merely about playing down the bling. Credit crunch or not, there has been a growing fatigue about luxury brands, that just justify their high prices with the status they represent instead of matching it with uniqueness and superior craftsmanship. Aspects such as environmental concerns and working conditions has also made their mark on how we think about luxury. One obvious way to signal craftsmanship, as well as an unique experience, is to include an element of craft in the packaging, especially when the packaging is an integral part of the product. These are two brands that have worked in different ways with their packaging to convey a sense of well crafted, artisan luxury goods worth spending your money on.

Bois D’Alexa handcrafted scented candles are specially created and poured in Grasse, France by historical candle makers, using lead-free 100% cotton wicks. Each candle is incased in a black French glass with an elegant lead-free pewter lid. The etching on the lid is hand done by artisans.

COTO is a luxury fashion accessories company in NYC, with quite unique packaging. COTO cuff links are packed in tiny glass vials sealed with a cork, while ties are in round capsule boxes. When shipped, COTO’s products come embedded in reindeer moss.

(COTO also talks about their products in a very “redefined luxury” way: “Utilizing nature-borrowed, sustainable materials, we create a limited collection for those who appreciate the details. By using carefully selected components, each product reveals a familiar, almost vintage quality in character and craftsmanship. They complement a style of understated sophistication – for the sartorial and sustainably minded.”)

(Photos from Lovelypackage.com and Reubenmiller.com)

These last years, the environment has been so much talked about, that it would be rather weird if it didn’t influence how we package our products. Packaging is of course a major culprit when it comes to our ecological footprint – from the production of different substrates, via the impact of packaging size and shape on transport, to the waste it eventually becomes. Therefore, much packaging by eco-conscious brands has been designed with the environment in mind in different ways.

However, a certain look of naturalness, dominated by unbleached and unprinted kraft board and simple (often intentionally uneven) screen printing, seems to be just as important to brands. Sending a clear signal to consumers that they’re doing something for the environment by buying these products is of course important – the sales argument of eco-friendliness should be clearly visible on the shelf. In some of these products, though, the natural look does not reflect an environmental benefit in the product itself, but just a general connotation of naturalness in other aspects: fresh ingredients for a meal instead of industrially produced frozen food, or good-for-you functional juices. In these cases, premium qualities are communicated with the absence of expensive looking packaging (foiling, UV coating, etc) – something I’ll return to in my next post which will cover The Other Side of Luxury.

For brands like cosmetics company Pangea Organics, the eco packaging thinking goes way beyond the look. Their clever glueless box, pictured below, is soy printed on 80% post-consumer single-ply uncoated paperboard, and carbon neutrally manufactured with 100% green electricity. An excellent example of a brand that’s truly consistent in delivering its brand promise.

Glueless box by Pangea Organics.

New Leaf 100% Recycled paper goods designed by Willoughby Design.

Scratch food packaging designed by Brandy.

M13 functional juice packaging designed by Betterdaze.

Basic Shapes toy packaging designed by Coöp.

Empty paperbags to be folded into animals, for the benefit of WWF, designed by Magdalena Czarnecki.

Cascade Green beer packaging designed by Landor Sydney.

(Pictures via The Dieline)

The prevalence of retro styled packaging is not a new trend, but seems to have really taken off this year. This is probably linked to the current economic climate. Hard times seem to bring more nostalgia for the good ole days – nostalgia which translates into visual culture, for example through consumer product packaging. In an unstable world, it’s not surprising that we reach for something safe from the shelf; a kind of visual comfort food if you will.

The perhaps most extreme example of taking advantage of consumers’ crisis-induced love of times gone by is companies actually going back to older packaging designs. The last picture below shows just such a phenomenon – vintage styled General Mills cereal boxes that were sold at Target in February and March this year. Another example of this is of course the much written about Throwback edition of Pepsi and Mountain Dew.

But probably, a part of the turn towards the intricacies of vintage packaging can also be explained in terms of broader design trends; the modernist hegemony of the early 00’s started in time to seem  limiting to designers. Elegant as a simple, stark graphic approach may be, it can also mean a risk for brand anonymity. With the whole arsenal of retro ornament and imagery at hand, the designer might be better equipped to bring out the personality and history of the brand. This way of connecting with a brand’s story is of course in line with the trend of consumers seeking out the local, the authentic and the obscure.

Booths Originals heritage range designed by Camilla Lilliesköld.

Irving Farms coffee designed by Louise Fili.

Loto Massage Oils designed by Arutza Onzaga, P576.

Mommy Francis takeaway packaging designed by ilovedust.

Painted Pretzel pretzel packaging designed by Yael Miller.

General Mills cereal boxes on the shelf.

Half of 2009 has passed. It might be an appropriate time for some recapitulation of trends, that have emerged or intensified this year in the field of packaging. At least three clear trends can be identified, that I will briefly explain and exemplify over the same number of posts.

Packaging is of course, like other forms of visual communication, deeply submerged in culture. Therefore, though some trends seem to emerge solely as self referencing fashions among design agencies, they can often on closer inspection be seen as a reaction to overlying tendencies in the world around us. (Which strengthens my view, that to excel in working with brand communication, you above all have to be interested in what happens in the world. Without being curious, and knowledgeable, about life, people, trends, economy or politics, you can not expect the pieces of communication you produce to actually communicate to people.) With this in mind, there’s no surprise that packaging this year has been steering towards The Safety of Yesteryear, The Other Side of Luxury and The Goodness of Nature. These are the trends that I’ll look into for the next three posts.