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Bell gilds the gumboot with new tea packaging

Ordinarily, there’s not too much to get excited when you’re talking about standard black tea. But the folks at Bell Tea & Coffee Company seem pretty chuffed with the new Bell Original tea packaging. 

The new

The old

While a quick glance at the new box might not reveal too much in the way of sweeping design changes, Bell’s marketing manager Jessica Bailey, says the changes are plentiful. And like recent and much-discussed branding efforts of late like Sealord and Z Energy, she says the new look comes after extensive consumer research by way of focus groups.

“When you play with a Kiwi icon, you need to work out how you can change it without turning the brand loyalist off, whilst still giving it a contemporary feel,” says Bailey.

Coats Design from Auckland, which has had a long-standing relationship with Bell, are behind the physical redesign, which was a year-and-a-half in the making. So what’s new? Matt Greenwood, described as the ‘Tea Guy’ for Bell Tea & Coffee Company, explains the front of the box is “much more modern”. He puts this down to the addition of new colour and the use of “two steaming mugs of tea and a beautiful shot of the tea pouring from the spout of a teapot”.

And that’s because the beauty of tea, says Bailey, is in watching it pour.

“It makes it more dynamic,” she says.

The iconic red colour of old is retained in the new look, but with a much more gradient-like effect, resulting in what Bailey describes as “a bit of movement and light rather than being a two dimensional colour”.

Green also makes its debut on the packaging, giving it “a bit of a zing”, according to Bailey. It also symbolises freshness.

“People respond well to green because it represents freshness,” she says.

And while its arguable if anyone would notice, there’s a slight name change too. There are a number of tea brands in the Bell stable now, the company’s first and traditional black tea has for a long time just been known as Bell. Bailey says the company wanted to give it a more distinctive name and after researching viable alternatives, “Bell original” came out tops.

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