New taste, new identity: PG Tips reveals refined brand world and packaging

With the UK black tea category suffering from long-term decline, PG Tips sought to stimulate demand with the launch of a new blend. Boundless Brand Design was brought onboard to craft an updated brand identity that aligns with its Original blend’s new and improved taste.

PG Tips recognised that, in order to win back the nation’s avid tea drinkers, it had to address issues of brand inconsistency. With taste and overall quality identified in research as the main drivers for consumer preference, the 96-year-old company changed the formula for its Original blend, adding a fuller flavour.

The mission for brand studio Boundless was therefore to bring hope, warmth and cheerfulness back into the brand. Playing on that theme of optimism, which was felt to sum up its loyal drinkers’ perceptions of PG Tips, Boundless developed the brand idea of ‘Welcome Home.’

Shaping how the brand looks and feels at every touchpoint, its revised packaging features charming illustrations, with the tea leaves’ ‘tips’ also staging a comeback.

Hamish Shand, founder and executive creative director at Boundless Brand Design, says, "With heritage brands there's always a temptation to look backwards, but heritage isn't an aesthetic. The real value is everything a brand has accumulated over time: the memories, the rituals, the place it has earned in people's lives. PG Tips has nearly a century of that, and what we found underneath it wasn't a particular logo or shade of green. It was a feeling of optimism.

“At its best, PG Tips has always had an incredible warmth to it: a unique blend of uplift and British humour. The opportunity was to bring that optimism back, and to create something that feels unmistakably PG Tips without pretending it's still 1950, 1980 or 2000.”