JKR

The trend for premium brands to offer customisation appears to be in full bloom: from Moët bottles encrusted with personalised messages in Swarovski crystals by the “Moët atelier” to Brabantia’s “colour your bin” programme, offering a choice of 200 colours to match your kitchen. Havaianas are selling their flip flops in two hundred colours with accessorisation in Selfridges and Hermes have reissued all one hundred colours of their H tie from the archive, and are giving peacock city boys the option of choosing from a thousand additional colours, virtually guaranteeing a unique tie for the wearer (below left). Nike-id offers online customisation of their sneakers (below right). It’s all a long way from Henry Ford’s proclamation “any colour as long as it’s black.” Of course this “limited edition of just one, just for you” approach is engaging and relevant for thought leader brands which can command a robust price, but is it an avenue open to less high end FMCG brands with tiny margins?

On cursory inspection the high end model for customisation seems to break into two models: either on-line, where a sense of customisation is given by what is in reality just a really wide choice, or via “brand embassies” set up for the promotion, such as the aforementioned Havaianas and Moët examples. With digital printing it’s theoretically feasible to custom print certain FMCG packaging in store but this seems a bit OTT – would you bother queuing for a personalised chocolate bar? However, on-line the possibilities open up. Nesspresso’s huge range of coffee blends makes an online order essentially a customised experience. M&M’s let you choose bespoke colours of the sweets and add personalised messages, which shows even the most humble of products can access the trend. Meanwhile, MyMuesli.com allows anyone dull enough to custom mix their own blend of muesli to order (see below).

It seems like a bit of a palaver to set up the infrastructure for such a scheme, but perhaps we are on the tip of an iceberg? On-line shopping is making such strides it seems curious that the soap powder we buy on the web still looks like the one from the supermarket. Freed from the need to function within the practical requirements of the shop shelf (standout, navigation, appetite appeal etc.) brands could be liberated to become truly visually iconic. I want my Corn Flakes to feature just the rooster, sans product claims or photographs of cereal bowls, and my Persil box to be clad with some of those beautiful historic advertisements. Delivered in this way such brands would be displayed as temporary eye candy in my kitchen rather than tucked away in a cupboard and forgotten about. And if the packs would be tailored to the person ordering them, there could be no more direct form of marketing. 10,000 days ago few had home computers, “videogames” were exclusively for boys and Starbucks sounded exotic. In the next 10,000 days is it too fantastical to imagine everyday packaging that’s especially designed for us as individuals?