Private label can't win on price alone anymore, not when every pack looks the same on shelves. Our last piece explored why its next challenge is winning on distinctiveness, not price. This piece is about where retailers are finding it: some borrowing a recognisable character, some a cultural moment, others building an identity of their own.
Private label ranges face a unique challenge: dozens of new products a year, across every category, developed on a fraction of the marketing budget of the household FMCG brands sitting next to them. Price alone is no longer the key driver of loyalty: shoppers need a reason to choose the private label pack instead.
We’ve tested how three retailers are closing that gap, using Behaviorally's Pack.AI platform, which uses AI to predict how shoppers see, understand and choose packaging on shelf.
Creating a new range around a cultural moment: Waitrose x Rivals
To coincide with the launch of Disney+'s series Rivals, Waitrose created a limited-edition range in retro-style packaging across a handful of products, rather than simply layering a logo onto its existing range.
The Steak Diane Crisps pack stands out: it achieves an overall PackPower Score of 60, with Seen performing particularly well (71), driven by Visibility on Shelf and Second Look Rate at Shelf. Selected is at 63, well ahead of the 41 mean Selected score across the 200+ private label packs Behaviorally has tested.
It's the same story across the rest of the range with the other Rivals crisp flavour and cocktails. And it's an even stronger picture set against the wider Waitrose range. Each Rivals product beats its closest classic Waitrose equivalent. Rivals products average twenty points higher on Purchase Intent than Waitrose's regular private label range, the single biggest gap of any metric we measured.
Rather than building awareness for a new product from a standing start, Waitrose is successfully riding a wave of attention Disney+ was always going to generate for its own series: trailers, press coverage and social buzz. That's a different lever to a straightforward pack redesign: leasing distinctiveness from an entertainment partner's marketing reach, rather than manufacturing it from scratch.
Layering iconic branding onto an existing range: Lidl x Emily in Paris
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Lidl took a lighter-touch approach when Emily in Paris returned to screens in 2024. Rather than creating a new range, its French Duc de Coeur products – already sold across its stores – were given a limited-edition makeover: Emily's portrait, the series’ logo, and a scattering of camera, rose and croissant icons layered onto otherwise unchanged packaging.
The success is clear on pack: across the range, Unique scores rise by an average of thirty points once the Emily in Paris design goes on, with 14 of the 15 products tested scoring higher on that measure than their classic Duc de Coeur equivalent.
The Frozen Macaron is a great example of this. In its standard Duc de Coeur packaging, the product scores a PackPower Score of 47; wearing the Emily in Paris design, the identical product climbs to 54. That seven-point jump doesn't come from the shelf mission – Shoppable actually edges down slightly (35 to 29), and Findability at Shelf falls from 57 to 39: it comes from how distinctive and desirable the pack looks. Seductive rises from 54 to 76: Unique climbs from 30 to 79, and Worth Paying More For from 69 to 91.
A licensed collaboration like this can manufacture, in one refreshed pack, the kind of standout perception a design team might otherwise spend months chasing.
Building an owned identity: M&S's Percy Pig and Spencer Bear
Not every retailer has a blockbuster licence to call on. Over the years, M&S has developed its own in-house characters instead. Could their home-grown identity deliver the same lift as a borrowed one?
Take Percy Pig, its longest-running character. Across the ice cream and sweet packs tested, Percy Pig-branded packs scored no higher than M&S's own plain equivalents (52 vs. 55 on ice cream cones; 49 vs. 48 on sweets). The packs still read as distinctive: Percy Pig scores higher on Unique than the plain versions, but that distinctiveness doesn't translate into a stronger pack overall, held back by weaker scores on Premium and Trust.
Spencer Bear tells a different story. A newer addition to M&S's character stable, it consistently scores in the high 50s to 60. It sees the same uplift as Emily in Paris and Rivals, without giving up ground on Premium or Trust the way Percy Pig does.
Owning a character isn't a shortcut to distinctiveness: it must keep earning its place on pack, or a borrowed spotlight will win out instead.
Three different levers, one shared lesson: distinctiveness earns a second look and a repeat purchase; price alone no longer does. Whether borrowed or built, none of it happened by accident on these packs – and that's exactly what Behaviorally's Pack.AI platform is designed to measure, before a pack ever reaches shelf.
Contact us today to learn more.
