Top 10 tips to make your product label shout…

Top of the range. High end. Exclusive. Best ever. Award winning. There’s a legion of terms that manufacturers use to tell you their offering is a premium product.

But when consumers come across those products on the shelf, how do they decide whether it really is a premium product and worth the premium price? They rarely get the chance to taste or test. The label – that’s how. The label is a representation of the product, drives brand engagement and ‘guides’ the customer’s thinking about what is inside the packaging.

So how do you ensure your label marks out your product as premium? If you’re planning a premium product, here’s my top ten tips to ensure your label shouts ‘QUALITY’.

1. The right design team— style, shape, material, font and colour, even the shade of a colour, all influence perception of quality. It’s important to work with a team (designer and printer together) who understands premium label design, who can help you formulate your brief and bring it to life. The right team with expertise in premium labelling, will help shape your ideas, challenge you and provide feedback based on experience of what will and won’t work to ensure your vision is translated to the finished design.
2. Understand your options— there are many labelling embellishments that help to mark your product as premium, and it’s essential to understand these at the design stage so they can be incorporated into the brief, ensuring a label is designed to make best use of the textures, colours and finishes available.
3. Overall packaging— think about how your customer engages with your product at the point of decision. For example, if your product that is sold in multiples in a cardboard box, like a slab of beer, then your customers aren’t going to see your beautiful label until after they’ve made the purchase decision, and you might want to put your design efforts into the outer packaging and use a more cost effective label on the bottle?
4. Metallic Materials— The use of a metallic foil stock, rather than plain white material can provide a premium look without the expense of cold or hot foil stamping. Metallic foil can be printed digitally and conventionally to produce a range of vibrant emulated foil colours.  The use of white ink to block out the foil in certain areas of the label, allows the emulated metallic finish to be on selected parts of your design.
5. Foil stamping— an alternative to a metallic foil material, this technique uses Cold Foil or Hot Foil to also highlight parts of the design. This type of foiling can be used in conjunction with textured or clear materials. It tends to be more expensive, though allows for a wider range of label materials to be considered.
6. Uncoated (Textured) Materials— if you’re after an organic, natural or old world feel for your premium label, think about one of the uncoated label stock options. These offer textured, fibrous, parchment-like or fabric surfaces that are very attractive to the eye and to the touch.
7. Embossing— if you want texture, embossing literally ‘stands out’. Be aware that to achieve the best result you’ll need to use a thicker label material and also allow a longer production lead time, as the best embossing tools are sourced from overseas. Embossing can be used on a printed element of your design or as a ‘blind emboss’ with no colour on the embossed areas. You can also use embossing to add a texture to part or all of your label. You could even have a concave design, known as ‘debossing’. Whichever way you choose to use it, embossing shouts ‘quality’.
8. Finish— matt or gloss? Market opinion sways a little on which indicates a premium product. Currently, matt is seen to depict quality (perhaps because a finish that is too glossy can reflect light and make it harder to read?), but it’s really a question of your preference. If you love the gloss look, consider spot gloss to highlight key elements of a design on an otherwise matt label.
9. Specialist finishes— if your product is likely to rub up against others on the shelf, consider an anti-scuff finish to your labels to keep them pristine. If touch is important, then a soft touch finish, with its velvety feel, is a very classy option.
10. Personalisation— this is one of the fastest growing trends enabling companies to engage with millennials. Personalisation allows the customer to have a unique ‘one-of-a-kind’ experience – a product that is theirs and theirs alone.

Coca Cola’s ‘Share a Coke’ named bottles was one of the most successful brand engagement campaigns ever seen. Personalisation can be seen more and more in the market as companies start to understand Millennials. Wineries can personalise in many ways including, placing a unique ‘limited edition’ number on some of their limited release wines, whilst corporates print their clients’ names on gift editions of their product and the beer industry has created different designed labels for each bottle. Personalised labeling builds brand engagement and a powerful perception of quality.