The case against redesigning your drinks brand
The most common mistake in drinks brand management is not a bad redesign. It is an unnecessary one.
When sales soften or a category shifts, the instinct is to change the packaging. New creative direction. Refreshed identity. A signal to the market that something is happening. It feels like action. It rarely is.
What it usually does is erase the accumulated brand equity that took years to build.
The science behind brand longevity
Effective brand design works by building memorability, trust and consumer stickiness over time. These are not soft outcomes. They are measurable commercial assets. But they only accumulate if the visual cues stay consistent. Every time a brand changes its design, it resets part of that clock.
Consumers do not consciously study labels. They recognise them. Distinctive Brand Assets, the specific visual codes that make a brand immediately identifiable at shelf, are built through repetition. Break them too often and you are not refreshing a brand. You are starting over.
Proof: 23 years and still contemporary
We redesigned Yabby Lake Vineyard in the early years of our business. The brief called for something genuinely distinctive. We built a near full-wrap label with a 12mm gap at the back and a single dieline across two varietals. The way the graphics sit on the bottle, when you line them up on shelf, the labels form a continuous wavy pattern. Elegant, specific, immediately recognisable.
Yabby Lake has not changed that design in 23 years. It still looks as contemporary as the day we completed it.
That is not luck. It is what good design does when it is built around a real brand idea rather than a category trend. It ages well because it was never chasing the moment.
Proof: a 2012 redesign still earning its keep
Our 2012 redesign of the Penfolds Bin range remains relevant more than thirteen years later. It has been cited as a contributing factor to Penfolds being named the world's most powerful wine brand by Brand Finance. A 23-year client-agency partnership, built on deep category understanding and the discipline to evolve without disrupting, has produced work that compounds in value rather than depreciating.
The commercial case for consistency is not sentimental. It is structural.
When redesign is the right call
This is not an argument for never changing. There are briefs where redesign is the correct answer. When a brand has been allowed to drift across multiple line extensions without a governing system. When a product has moved into a new tier and the packaging no longer signals the right price point. When a category has shifted so fundamentally that the existing visual language reads as outdated rather than established.
The distinction matters. Redesign from a position of strategic clarity is powerful. Redesign as a response to short-term pressure is almost always destructive.
How we approach the decision
Before we accept a redesign brief, we ask the client to define what the existing design is failing to do. Not aesthetically. Commercially. If the answer is that it looks tired, we push back. If the answer is that it is losing relevance with a specific consumer segment, or failing to compete in a new channel, or no longer supporting a price premium that the product genuinely commands, we proceed.
The best outcome of a packaging review is sometimes a decision not to redesign. We have had those conversations. They are among the most valuable we offer.
Denomination's work across 23 years and four global offices has been shaped by one consistent belief: that the bravest design decision is often the one that protects what is already working.
Denomination was featured in Communication Arts, one of the world's leading design publications, in 2026.
