My wife and I returned to the U.S. yesterday afternoon, after 4 days in London England, where I spoke at the Own Label Show. The show, compact by American standards, still boasted an enthusiastic crowd who was eager to learn about Private Brands in the US.
Even more exciting was the opportunity to walk stores in the UK including: Tesco, Waitrose, Coop, Sainsbury, Boots, Superdrug & Harrods over the next few weeks I will present posts on each complete with numerous pictures and commentary. Today a few highlights:
- Private Brand penetration is indeed startlingly high.
- All of the retailer’s Private Brand portfolio architecture and strategy is virtually identical: Good – Better – Best with numerous segments defined within each Organic, Baby, etc. For example: Tesco Value, Tesco, Tesco Finest and Tesco Organic, Tesco Goodness, Tesco Baby, etc.
- Retailers use their store name across all quality and price tiers.
- Despite the high level of Private Brand package design is remarkably similar when you compare retailers package design tier to tier, which leads to a startling lack of differentiation retailer to retailer.
Best is consistently Black with metallic highlights, pretty pictures and san serif fonts
Better has varied package design and color that is unique to each category while maintaining a consistent banner logo. The language is often playful and cheeky.
Good is white with product silhouettes and clean design
- Retailers use celebrity endorsements to create exclusive endorsements for their Private Brand (ie. Delia Smith and Heston Blumenthal for Waitrose.) This creates a super premium or unique tier brand however it is still associated with the store name.
- Tesco’s Venture brands: ice cream brand ChokaBlok, and pet food brands Lathams and Nutricat are beginning to appear in store although they appear to have unique visual languages and package designs they are still narrow and category specific, mimicking manufacturer brands which were initially defined by manufacturing capabilities.
- Packaging in supermarkets is pervasive and often overwhelming with everything from individual bananas to mini desserts encased in plastic.
- Ready to Eat and Ready to Heat are huge portions of the store while frozen is minimized to ice cream and a small selection of other items.
It’s a shame that you didn’t manage to get to see an Asda (Walmart’s presence in the UK) as your summary may have been slightly different if you had (Asda is the 2nd biggest after Tesco in the UK).
There is indeed a “good, better, best” structure in the UK, but the “better” portion of that ranging is splitting in to two opposing strategies. Led by Asda, the middle tier, which makes up the majority of the retailers’ private brand offers, is moving away from taking category brand cues and is becoming more strongly owned by the retailer brand. In Asda this better tier is branded “Chosen By You” and has a common cross category design. Sainsbury’s are also introducing a cross category approach in this important middle section with “….by Sainsbury’s”. The Cooperative have been doing this for some time with their mid-tier range as well.
On the other side of the coin is the approach taken by Tesco (and others) where they choose to use more expected category specific brand-led design cues that more directly compete with the manufacturer brands. The introduction by Tesco of their venture brands is an interesting development; does it strengthen the Tesco offer by implying greater choice, or does it undermine it by weakening the presence of the Tesco brand ownership of the quality products? Time will tell!
Guy
Thanks for the note, unfortunately I did not make it to an ASDA, but I am certainly familiar with your work there and it is a definite improvement. I am not sure I would categorize it as a opposing strategy so much as a hybrid. Dominate black banner and ASDA logo on top with category relevant design on the bottom, it still speaks more to the category than to ASDA as a brand.
The real question for all retailers is does the design strategy speaks to and reinforces their private brand portfolio strategy and build loyalty and differentiation with their customers.
Nice work and I like your site
Thanks
Christopher
Enjoyed the article, great insights!
Enjoyed article, great insights!