Retailers are investing more heavily in own label (Nielsen), to the extent that own label brands no longer represent a compromise on quality or innovation. Supermarket brands are introducing higher-end quality to their premium own label ranges, with ASDA adding over 400 products to its Exceptional by Asda line – among them, Smoked Haddock Rarebit, Blood Orange Cheesecake, and a San Francisco Style Sourdough Bloomer.

While own label has been increasing in quality and become more appealing during uncertain economic times, own label brands face a significant limitation – they deliver far less on emotional engagement than established, independent brands. Brands enable ‘brand love’ and powerful nostalgia, whereas own label is not typically pulling the same emotional levers for customers.

How can brands leverage deeper cultural and emotional narratives to win vs increasingly competitive own label?

Cultural Leadership: Playing with References

Sign Salad has previously written about how own label ranges are diversifying and offering elevated quality (have a read here). Even though own label has become more exciting, ultimately, the own label category can only adopt semiotic codes that are already well-established. For instance, darker colours and gold touches for signalling higher quality, or leaf icons and green packs for referring to vegetables. Named brands, however, can play with semiotic codes. They have license to rethink what ‘premium’ looks like, rather than repeating tried and tested signals of premium.

As an example, hismile toothpaste achieved international success with vibrant, completely non-traditional toothpaste flavours and social media-led packaging that would be impossible for a retailer-owned brand to launch without precedent. The cultural permission to break category norms belongs to name brands – though we’ll likely see own label following suit with more creative, non-minty flavour options.

Perennial controversies around copyright claims levelled at Lidl and Aldi also illustrate this dynamic. Retail brands respond to established category reference points, not create new cultural meanings for a category. Name brands have built more trust with customers over time, and can therefore look outside of category norms to tap into broader cultural currents.

Everyday Storytelling

Combining social data analysis with cultural insight is an effective way for name brands to tap into cultural currents, stay ahead of changing consumer needs, and identify innovation opportunities and meaningful stories that own label can’t match. At Sign Salad, we use social data to gather unfiltered consumer feedback on a category. For instance, we ran a social data search covering the laundry detergent conversation across Reddit, X and on Amazon reviews. 

We didn’t include any brand names in the search, which only covered neutral terms (“laundry detergent”, “washing powder AND clothes” etc.). The results offer insight into consumer needs, emotions and concerns around the category, all of which name brands can respond to, leveraging their agility over retail brands.

The detergent search turned up multiple mentions of pets, in various contexts. Cats were especially prominent, not just in the expected context of removing pet odours, but more because of their mischievous nature. We see cats knocking over near-full detergent bottles; cats obsessed with turning on taps; cats that love to nestle in laundry machine drums. This is a rich emotional territory and consumer truth that name brands can tap into with dedicated marketing, going beyond the stain & odour-removal claims own label brands focus on.

At the same time, the power of shared brand recognition showed up in the social conversation. In the post pictured above, Redditors were invited to guess the alias of a ragdoll cat with a tendency to climb into the washing machine. The comments make playful reference to well-known brands – “Purrcil” or “smol”. No one guessed the cat’s alias as Kirkland UltraClean or Tesco Non Bio.

Name brands are household staples and have license to build playful, emotional stories around mess management. 

Meaningful Innovation

The same social data search reveals other needs that name brands can respond to. Many people are posting about skin sensitivity, allergies and difficulties with strong laundry fragrances. There are multiple mentions of choosing an unscented laundry detergent, and adding essential oils at home, depending on the scent level each customer wants.

There’s a distinctive innovation opportunity here for premium brands around scent customisability. Instead of the polar opposites of ‘intensely floral’ vs ‘unscented’ typically available from own label, brands can leverage their R&D resources to develop personalised fragrance options or modular scent solutions. Unlike own label, name & premium brands can keep up with the pace of customisability and innovation that consumers are already creating for themselves.

3 Key Takeaways for Brands:

  1. Name brands have the cultural permission to play with existing design cues and category conventions, whereas retail brands are more limited by established category codes. How can you take cultural inspiration from outside of your immediate category?

  2. Using a combination of cultural insight and social data analysis helps brands understand their consumers’ everyday needs, and lived experiences of a category. Brands can leverage creative and comms to connect with those needs and experiences on a deeper, more emotional level than own label.

  3. Trusted brands can innovate by getting a deep understanding of unfiltered customer feedback. Again, social data offers a window into consumer lifestyles and preferences, while cultural insight and semiotics provides guidelines on how to bring innovations to life in a relevant, distinctive way.

Katrina Russell, Director

Using Cultural Foresight to Win vs Own Label: How brands can leverage semiotics, culture and even cats