Exceptional by Asda
Redefining premium with taste centre stage.
As ASDA’s most ambitious own-label launch to date, Exceptional set out to elevate quality perceptions beyond Extra Special and redefine how premium can look on supermarket shelves.
Challenge.
The premium own-brand market is growing, and Asda’s top-tier label, Extra Special, has been on shelves since 2000. Asda want customers to reappraise their quality credentials, and the premium range has a vital role to play in this. They challenged us to create a new premium brand to replace Extra Special, one that is all about the most delicious taste above all else.
With categories spanning everything from Christmas classics to the very best coffee, chocolate, fresh meat and produce, the brand needed consistency across hundreds of SKUs without losing category individuality.
Idea.
The new brand proposition “All. About. Taste.” represents the very best tasting products Asda has to offer, and the new brand name needed to quickly encapsulate this. Following a collaborative naming workshop, Exceptional was born.
Our colour study identified a gap in the premium own-label category for a green, jewel-like, decadent colour that also connected to Asda’s green heritage, clearly brand blocking Asda’s premium tier.
The sophisticated gold word-mark is supported by a beautifully crafted monogram E, that transforms into an elegant pattern for gifting and stamp with "by Asda" for restricted spaces.
Our cinematic photography style creates mood and drama whilst spotlighting the food, ensuring the eye is always drawn to the mouth-watering taste that makes the product truly Exceptional.
In-house, we crafted bespoke illustrations, spanning artisanal craft styles through to premium gold embellished styles for luxury gifting.
To make the brand launch seamless, we not only delivered packaging across categories, we designed in-store point of sale and ran training sessions with ASDA’s in-house teams, ensuring the brand could scale long after launch. It was an all-hands effort as every designer, artworker, and account manager in the studio had a hand in shaping Exceptional.
Impact.
Exceptional by ASDA has been rolling out across stores since late 2024, beginning with seasonal Christmas lines and now expanding into core categories. The range gives ASDA a powerful new weapon in the ongoing own-label wars, bridging value and quality to strengthen the supermarket’s tier strategy – from Just Essentials at the entry point to Exceptional at the very top.
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