How Häagen-Dazs Turned a $6 Pint of Ice Cream Into a Luxury Item

Of all the changes wrought by the pandemic economy, few categories have been as reshuffled as luxury. Sales of traditional luxury items took a major hit last year, with jewelry, designer apparel and upmarket travel destinations losing 22%, plummeting back to 2015 levels, according to research from Bain & Co. Yet while millions of Americans have stayed (and continue to stay) at home, a curious resurgence has taken place: Consumers have spent major dollars on personal indulgences, what marketers have sometimes called “everyday luxury” or “affordable luxury.” For example, sales of fragrances jumped 45% during the first quarter of 2021, according to data from the NPD Group. Men have spent money on high-end shaving products. And millions of people have been popping champagne, sending sales up by 103% in April, according to NielsenIQ. Now comes word of the latest entrant to the luxury sector: Häagen-Dazs ice cream. Wait—come again? The brand founded in the Bronx in 1960 that retails for about $6 a pint? From Drag Queens to the Pope’s Painter: How Magnum Built a Brand For Pleasure Seekers Well, yes. Earlier this week, Häagen-Dazs debuted its first packaging overhaul in years, part of a rebranding effort that’s intent on nudging this familiar product, already viewed as a treat, into consumers’ conception of luxury. Not, of course, as something akin to a Rolex watch, but a downsized splurge that can be enjoyed at the kitchen table—pandemic luxury, if you will. “The definition of luxury is usually about extravagance,” Häagen-Dazs marketing director Rachel Jaiven admitted to Adweek. “But when [my team] talked about this idea of luxury, it was about the comfort part rather than extravagance. Luxury doesn’t have to be so serious—especially today.” But how does an already familiar ice cream brand go about shifting perceptions upward? One way is with some refinements to the packaging. We called up Ryan Doro, senior designer at the Chase Design Group, the firm charged with making some strategic upgrades, to ask him what that looks like in practice. Below are the new features he pointed out. The Background: “We call that the brand tapestry, and before it was uniform across all flavors,” Doro said. “With the new design it differentiates between the flavors and adds more appetite appeal. There’s more movement. [It evokes] the creaminess of the ice cream.” The Color Match: Chase borrowed the gold lines of the old tapestry but filled the new swirly shapes with colors that correspond to the flavor offerings. “What people interpret as luxury today is different than what it used to be,” Doro said. “So that pushed us to inject a lot more personality and color.” The Fruit: The images of fruit not only got bigger, but intentionally messier. “We aimed to be more natural and playful,” Doro said. “There’s an organic layout to them now with realistic drips and drizzles and stuff that accent the flavor cues and add more movement and authenticity.” The Typeface: Wording below the fruit has been dropped to lowercase and into script, making it “more approachable and more friendly,” Doro said. Chase developed a new proprietary font, called Dazs, for the packaging. The White Space: One thing that hasn’t changed is Häagen-Dazs’ penchant for leaving much of its pint surface without any decoration at all. “Häagen-Dazs has always used that clean white backdrop as a way to let their pure ingredients shine on pack,” Doro said. "So that's why it's still being used to back up the ingredient photography."