The raved-about Starbucks Coffee Liqueur bottle design reflects Starbucks' and Jim Beam's reputations as sophisticated brands.

Much ado has been made over the stunning glass container introduced in 2005 that made Starbucks Coffee Liqueur the top seller in the category and made the brown-bottle design a unanimous winner in the Glass Packaging Institute’s Clear Choice Awards program. But not so well known are the factors that prompted that success.

It was another case of knowing your consumer—how they shop and the visual and cognitive cues that prompt them to buy. Ryan Little, Managing Director/Creative at Lipson Alport Glass & Associates, uses the term “emotive resonance” in describing the notion of satiating consumer desires, and he explained its place in the design for Starbucks Coffee Liqueur at the Package Design 06 conference Jan. 31.

Starbucks coffee is close to achieving market maturity. However, its consumer base remains fanatically loyal to the product, and the company estimates the coffee brand’s value at $16.2 billion, more than two-thirds of the value of the whole company. Little says that marketers at Starbucks faced this challenge: How do you continue to grow a brand that’s saturated and take it in new directions?

The brand’s coffee products are popular earlier in the day, but Starbucks wanted to learn whether the brand value was strong enough that consumers would end their day with a Starbucks product. Consumers used terms such as "socially aware" and "fun-loving" in interviews to describe the Starbucks brand persona. The research also found that Starbucks patrons would be nine times more likely to drink a coffee-based liqueur than other consumers.

These findings served as the impetus for a partnership between Starbucks and Jim Beam Brands, Little explains. Consumers associate the Jim Beam brand with expertise and sociability in distilled spirits as they do with Starbucks in coffee. For each brand, the “personality” goes well beyond the product, and the bottle design for Starbucks Coffee Liqueur reflects this sophistication.

With its broad shoulders, the tapered bottle resembles a cocktail shaker. Typically, shakers have an inverse taper from the bottom to the widest part of the container, about two-thirds of the way up, then the container tapers back slightly toward the shoulder. The Starbucks Coffee Liqueur bottle contrasts this traditional design with a straight-sided upper area.

Moving farther down the bottle, the base contains more glass than typical liqueur bottles to prevent it from tipping over.

Jim Beam developed the product formulation, and it also licenses and distributes the coffee liqueur to retailers and clubs.

--By Jim George, Editor