Customisation in the age of hyper-personalisation

Bringing products to life

Back in the physical world, labels and packaging provide the perfect tonic for brands wanting to maximise engagement with consumers, create brand loyalty, and transform buyers into repeat business. This ranges from winning on the shelf at the all-important ‘Moment of Truth’, and use and interaction in the home, to acting as a brand ambassador in the cupboard and the fridge door.

This is one reason why Packaging Innovations & Empack 2026 is critical to the industry’s future. From material innovations and new structures to legislation governing the future of the packaging industry, this event is a platform for the future and reflects the ongoing needs of the market.

An example of this is digital label and package printing, which has quickly become prominent on the show floor. An increasing number of printers exhibiting offer digital print and workflows as a service, with more attendees seeking out digital print solutions.

At the same time, technologies have matured and enabled brands to react to the fickle nature of consumerism, embrace agile supply chains, and respond with packaging that captures the imagination and ensures consumers stay switched on and engaged.

The best example of this remains Coca-Cola’s ‘Share-a-Coke’ campaign, which leveraged the capabilities of digital print to produce millions of labels that featured hundreds of different names and forced consumers to seek out their own bottle on shelf.

While not a fully digital campaign, ‘Share-a-Coke’ opened consumers up to the idea of products being personal to them. More importantly, it showed brands the value and potential returns from utilising digital printing.

While the first iteration of ‘Share-a-Coke’ was more than a decade ago, an updated campaign ran in certain European markets across the summer in 2025.

There have been countless other examples of digitally printed labels and packaging in recent years, as notes David Richards, Managing Director at Amberley Labels.

“Digital printing has evolved dramatically since the ‘Share a Coke’ campaign. Today, customisation can go far beyond names on labels. Brands can tailor designs by region, season, event, or even individual consumer preferences.

“Variable data printing enables real-time changes in overall design, text, and even substrates. This has made mass personalisation not only possible but scalable. The ‘Share-a-Coke’ project was the beginning, but what was once a novelty is now a strategic capability.”

Andrew Mansfield, Managing Director at Harkwell, uses a bottle of honey rum as a specific example: “Add a honeycomb into the design, then add a bee, and link it to the HP Indigo Collage software. The bee travels around each label landing in different areas. So, from 100 to 100,000 labels, they are all unique.”

Richards continues: “Brands are no longer asking if they can personalise but are asking how fast and how flexibly it can be done. Digital printing enables this by removing the need for plates and long set-up times, allowing for short runs, quick turnarounds, and dynamic content. This scalability is especially valuable for seasonal promotions and influencer collaborations, something our own customers reference in our innovation presentations.”

Smirnoff and Nutella are other notable brands to have succeeded with personalised labels and packaging, although it doesn’t suit all brands, advises Mansfield, with some varying degrees of success for different reasons.

“Some brands still don’t know how to use digital and are stuck in their old ways,’ examples Mansfield. “There are still design houses today that don’t understand digital printing.”

He directly references recent instances of design houses visiting Harkwell’s facility and being astounded at the speed with which test prints, artwork adaptions, and approvals are made. “They were going home just after lunch having come to site and expecting an overnight stay!”