Message on a bottle: packaging the Great Russian past

Abstract

This paper employs a visual research method to examine how companies in post-socialist Russia use packaging to construct their brand identity. We analyse the packaging of two product categories in particular, namely chocolate and vodka, and show how packaging is exploited to generate certain types of myths, both about the brand itself and – crucially – about Russia and Russianness. As we show, a large number of brands in Russia build their identity around images associated in one way or another with the country's past. They do so primarily via packaging design. The paper's main contribution lies in the fact that it extends the pioneering work on packaging by Kniazeva and Belk into historical, visual and non-Western areas. In the light of our findings, greater attention needs to be paid both to the role packaging plays in branding and to the socio-historical context in which that branding is itself conducted.

Keywords:

• packaging
• visual representation
• consumption in post-socialist societies
• nostalgia
• identity
• myth

Acknowledgements

The author is extremely grateful to three anonymous reviewers, as well as Jonathan Schroeder, editor-in-chief of CMC, and Philippe Odou of Lille 2 University, for their many helpful and constructive comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Notes

1. The “streltsy” were units of Russian guardsmen from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth. The first such units were created by Ivan the Terrible around 1550. A “boyar” was a member of the highest rank of Muscovy aristocracy, from the tenth century to the seventeenth.