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Coca-Cola is launching three bottle designs by fashion designer Matthew Williamson this month, while stablemate Sprite is holding a consumer design competition for its latest limited-edition drinks packaging. Toblerone, meanwhile, has introduced a variant for special occasions that dispenses with the brand name in favour of relevant messages such as 'To My Dad, for Father's Day'.

While brands still work hard at building consistent imagery, some are turning to designs such as these to generate interest. 'With the fragmenting of mainstream media, packaging is becoming more of a primary medium,' says Simon Gore, general manager of Vibrandt, which has created limited-edition packaging for dairy brand Elmlea.

There is a closer relationship now between advertising and packaging design, as the latter becomes more tactical, says Mark Shickle, managing partner of The Brewery, which is working on a limited-edition personal care product for Lever Faberge. 'It's not a case of putting an ad campaign on-pack - that would be a disaster - but taking key thoughts and translating them onto the pack,' he says.

According to Bobby Monaghan, new business director at FutureBrand, marketers are also having to become more innovative to create brand excitement and engage with the consumer because retailers are running out of space to stock endless brand extensions.

Style with substance

Limited-edition designs work best when there is a good reason for them - be it an anniversary or as part of a marketing strategy. By limiting Matthew Williamson's designer bottles to Selfridges and a number of style bars, Coca-Cola is targeting a style-conscious audience that is most likely to appreciate the added value of a Williamson design.

In doing so, they may reassess their perceptions of a brand that is ubiquitous rather than stylish. Coke hopes the summery designs for the bottle wrap, inspired by Williamson's couture collection, will be as popular as previous special editions, which have ended up being sold as collectors' items.

'If you can't afford Matthew's collection, a bottle might do. They do look beautiful,' says Coke PR manager Joan O'Connor. 'It's an equity-building programme - getting the bottle out and noticed.'

Notable events are also a good hook for limited-edition packaging, hence the rash of special editions based around the turn of the millennium and the Golden Jubilee, including Budweiser's millennium-edition black-glass champagne-style bottle.

Brand anniversaries provide potentially more opportunity for limited-edition designs to stand out and connect with consumers. Marmite leveraged its centenary in 2002 with four limited-edition jars designed by PI Global to represent four different eras. 'The aim was to keep the brand fresh, relevant and interesting', says PI Global creative director Don Williams.

'Marmite is an iconic brand with a strong visual foundation, so it's relatively easy to integrate more surprising visual elements for such occasions.'

Worthwhile message

Green & Black's brought out its first limited-edition packaging this spring to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its Maya Gold organic chocolate as well as the 10th anniversary of the Fair Trade Foundation's Fair Trade mark. According to the brand's marketing director, Mark Palmer, it was important that it had something worthwhile to say, rather than self-indulgently use new packaging to puff the product.

'It was a chance to educate people about Fair Trade and organic cocoa, which is relevant to our story. Packaging is the perfect place to tell it,' he explains, as customers tend to spend time with the product, perhaps savouring it with a glass of wine. 'People are more captive, so it is a good time to talk to them, especially if you are telling them something that might interest them.'

Green & Black's commissioned Pearlfisher, which designs the brand's main packaging, to create special wrappers to run for four months, adding an anniversary strapline along with a summary of information on the back.

The full text explaining how cocoa is grown and how Green & Black's deals with growers is on the inside of the wrapper.

Seasonal opportunities to capitalise on a rise in consumption is another prime opportunity to introduce special packaging. For Valentine's Day this year and in 2003, Unilever Bestfoods commissioned Vibrandt to create packaging for Elmlea long-lasting cream. The six-week campaign saw Vibrandt adapt the core imagery to a romantic theme, with the strawberries becoming heart-shaped and supplemented by extra heart graphics. Product straplines were changed appropriately - single became 'young free and single', double became 'double the pleasure' and whipping was 'whipping up some lurve'.

This was an easy opportunity to have some fun with the brand, according to Vibrandt's Gore, and prompted customer reappraisal. 'It gives a chance to turn up the personality, raising awareness. With design, people feel there has to be a permanence to brand equity and icons, but by adding consumer intrigue, you can create excitement in the brand, particularly with everyday brands.'

Cost efficiencies

In production terms, the repro work and plates cost about £2000 and took about two hours to set up. While graphic treatments are relatively simple and economical, structural special designs, although more complex, can also prove cost-effective. When Lyle used Pancake Day to introduce a limited-edition money-box tin - designed in-house - to promote its larger, 907g syrup tin, it simply added a second, slotted lid to the standard tin for use after the main tin is finished, and added a line to the artwork about the promotion. The brand's distinctive graphics were left untouched.

'Lyle's Golden Syrup tin is an iconic, classic design, so we don't feel we need to constantly update it,' says Lyle brand manager Alison Ashman.

As a result of the four-week limited edition, the larger tin now accounts for 43% of sales, compared with 17% last year.

Limited-edition designs can be particularly effective if they are part of a broader communication strategy that is more contemporary and topical than long-term packaging would allow. Sprite's regularly updated graffiti packaging, now in its fourth year, is relevant to the brand's urban positioning and part of its efforts to connect credibly with young people through initiatives such as the Sprite Urban Games. After commissioning three artists for the first three years, this year's design will be chosen through a competition, with entrants given a template to work from to ensure packaging consistency. Design agency Dry will apply the artwork to the finished can.

'While this is not a sales exercise, the effectiveness of limited-edition packs as part of the Sprite Urban Programme can be seen to be having a positive effect on brand equity measures,' says a Sprite spokeswoman.

There can be pitfalls to going down the limited-edition design route, though. Brands need a strong, established identity that can accommodate variations or they risk confusing their customers. Risks are reduced by retaining some core equities - whether graphic or structural - as well as doing something new. When SiebertHead designed symmetrically-shouldered wine bottles for the 10 best wines in Italy for client Torino, it retained the original labels to give continuity during the year-long project. Conversely, its work for Toblerone, where it put limited-edition messages in place of the brand name, retained the distinctively shaped packaging.

'With limited editions you can have more fun. Because it's temporary you're looking short-term and not really hanging on to all the values of the brand,' explains Paula MacFarlane, head of graphic design at SiebertHead.

What's important is that any limited-edition designs are done with panache, commitment and confidence, says Andy Knowles, director of Jones Knowles Ritchie, which designed hugely popular Valentine's and Christmas gift packaging for Molton Brown using non-branded boxes.

'Clever limited-edition packaging is a useful tool in the marketing armoury,' he adds. 'It's not a substitute for other activities, but can bring very big paybacks. The danger is that brands are tempted to do it too often and it becomes commercial opportunism rather than brand engagement. That's when it's damaging to the brand.'

ESSENTIALS

Limited-edition products

Is it enough to invest in special packaging when the product stays the same? Many leading brands think not, preferring to introduce limited-edition variants as well as a visual change.

'There's no point doing a design-led limited edition. You need some substance behind it,' says Will Ursell, marketing controller at McCoy's, which has teamed up with John Smith's for its Steak & Ale limited edition, designed by Springetts, and has a track record of introducing limited-edition flavours.

So far the Steak & Ale campaign, combined with limited-edition Pepperami Mini Cheddars, has seen a £3m return.

'It comes down to having a real understanding of what your brand is. If you do, it gives you a bit more flexibility about what you can do about it,' he adds.

Landor creative director Derek Johnston says: 'We do a lot of research and when you just change a few graphics, consumers tend to think "so what - give me something different, then tell me about it".' He cites Walkers' Best of British crisps range as a successful limited edition, where links with brands such as Marmite and Branston Pickle produced limited-edition flavours, contained in packs designed by Landor. 'It does drive sales and gets consumers thinking that the brand is doing something fun,' Johnston adds.

But limited editions have to be handled carefully, or they risk damaging the underlying brand for good. 'The dilemma for marketers is: are you undermining your brand heritage by doing something that could be perceived to be a marketing gimmick?' says Pearlfisher creative partner Jonathan Ford, pointing to the chronic short-termism in the fragrance industry, which he says has resulted from too many limited-edition products.