The brand does not change when it arrives in Vietnam. The job of the pack does. The same bottle, the same heritage and the same brand book are asked to do five things they are not asked to do anywhere quieter — and most of the mistakes we see in Vietnam programmes come from briefing the pack for the job it has at home.
What follows is a working list, drawn from briefs for Pernod Ricard houses across six Tết seasons. It is practice, not market research.
The pack is bought to be given
Tết is the largest gifting moment for premium spirits in Vietnam. A gift is chosen by someone thinking about the person who will receive it, not about the liquid — so the box has to state the rank of the gift before anyone lifts the lid.
That is why Royal Salute was built as two tiers on one architectural construction: RS21 and its Vietnam-only 24 Exclusive Blend read as one family and as two levels of it. And why Chivas Regal had five expressions that needed to read as one range and still separate at arm’s length. The person receiving the box sees it before they ever see the bottle.
The shelf wears a uniform
A global brand book is written for a shelf where the brand is the loudest thing on it. In the weeks before Tết the loudest thing is the season: red, gold, blossom, a zodiac animal. Every pack on the shelf says festive, so festive stops being a reason to pick one up.
What is left to compete on is the brand itself. Imperial Blue had to put a tiger on a Year-of-the-Tiger carton without making it a picture of a tiger — the answer was a pattern that runs across the whole box, so a row of them reads as one scene. The brief was not to look more Vietnamese. It was to look more like the brand than the season does. How to test a pack against that shelf is the subject of how to design alcohol packaging that stands out on shelves.
Two rule books apply to one pack
The global guidelines were written for every market at once, and they are usually stricter than the local team expects. The Glenlivet’s keep the masterbrand teal off special editions. Ballantine’s lifts its chevron from the bottle and does not decorate it. Aberlour had to feel like Tết without adding a single element the brand does not already own.
So the Vietnam pack has to be festive inside rules written for the rest of the world. The way through is the same every time: change the material, not the identity — a new reading of an asset the brand already holds. We wrote that pattern up in how six spirits houses localise for Lunar New Year.
The calendar does not move
Brief in April, on shelf in October or November, artwork locked around June or July — because rigid boxes, foil and lacquer queue at the same printers in the same weeks, and the festival itself does not move. A pack at home that slips a quarter costs a quarter. A Tết pack that slips costs the season.
If a programme arrives late, the honest move is a smaller one: a gift box instead of a new primary pack. Whether to change the pack at all is its own decision, set out in limited edition for Lunar New Year, and the full nine months are in the Tết packaging playbook.
Vietnamese is part of the lettering
Tết lettering carries stacked Vietnamese diacritics — Ất Tỵ for 2025, Bính Ngọ for 2026 — and a brand typeface that has never been asked to set them often cannot. Design software swaps in a fallback face without telling anyone, and the first person to notice is the printer’s proofreader. Test a string with the real marks (ơ ư ờ ớ ở ỡ ợ) at display size, next to the brand face, before the layout is built around it.
What stays the same
The brand. A good Vietnam pack is recognisably the pack of the brand it belongs to: The Glenlivet kept its founder in the room for 2023, 2024 and 2025, and each season is still one line of descent. Tết gives a brand an occasion, not a licence to redraw itself.
If you are briefing a Vietnam programme, start from the question the global team rarely asks: what is this pack for, in this market, in this week? The answer usually changes the brief. More on our work for the category is on the spirits and wine page, and the starting point for a brief is Tết packaging design.
