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At a time where Private Label is challenging the added value that branded products offer to consumers, we consider what cues and moves mass brands can borrow to prove they really are worth paying more for.
In the 1990s, P&G’s Oil of Olay made one bold move that transformed it from a stagnating brand with around $750mn in sales into a $2.5bn global icon.
Olay’s context was not dissimilar to today: recessionary pressure was forcing consumers to reassess spending, while the brand struggled to stay relevant with younger consumers seeking guidance and inspiration from new channels and sources of influence.
The move felt counter-intuitive for a brand targeting everyday consumers. Most Olay SKUs were priced below $8, which is affordable for cash-strapped buyers, but leaving the brand lost among similar ‘drugstore’ offers that were not seen to address a problem consumers would pay more to solve. The team’s conclusion? To win with a younger, more aspirational audience, Olay needed to aim bolder and higher.
The insight was that many women aspired to luxury department-store skincare but could not afford it. What if Olay could offer similar luxury at a more accessible price, through everyday channels? The team took a risk, launching a new SKU at $18.99, a 400% premium to its core offer. It paid off, attracting mass shoppers willing to upgrade to a product they believed would make a difference, as well as prestige shoppers happy to spend less for comparable results.
This strategy marked one of beauty’s most notable brand turnarounds and helped open up the ‘masstige’ market that many other brands benefited from in the 1990s.
Fast-forward to today, and many consumer brands face a similar challenge. Private label has seriously upped its game, with consumers increasingly unable to distinguish branded products from retailers’ own. So why should they pay more for a brand?
As PepsiCo recently demonstrated, dropping prices to be more in line with store brands will not necessarily help, with the business failing to generate sales growth despite a 15% price drop across core brands. In our view, the bolder play is for brands to actually consider ‘luxe-ing up’: borrowing cues from prestige and premium brands to create new signals of value that demonstrate they really are worth paying more for.
But while in the 1990s, luxury was largely defined by visible markers of status, polish and aspiration: the logo, the store, the lifestyle signal. Today, particularly as AI makes polished and optimised outputs more abundant, value is shifting towards depth, discernment and a stronger sense of human intent.
The new codes of luxury are therefore less about excess and more about making value tangible: finding richness in the ordinary, turning crafted imperfection into desirability and exploring what new forms of ‘scarcity’ (time, human connection, headspace) can be translated into real value.
e.l.f. Beauty shows how these cues can drive trade-up within mass beauty. In its August 2026 earnings call, it reported 36% Q1 net sales growth (its 30th consecutive quarter of growth) and raised its full-year outlook. e.l.f.’s playbook isn’t dissimilar to Olay’s – borrowing prestige cues but at more attainable price points through trend-led, sensorial products, distinctive design and culturally fluent collaborations. It not only makes consumers feel part of beauty culture, but creates an aura of savviness around their purchasing, inviting them to compare their purchase to higher end brands such as Charlotte Tilbury rather than mass market alternatives.
But this playbook can work well beyond the beauty aisle.
In FMCG, consumers might pay more for provenance, preparation, flavour intensity or a ritual that makes an everyday product more rewarding. In apparel, the premium might come from better materials, fit, repairability or limited production – take the latest category disruptor Quince for example. In white goods, it could be justified through quieter performance, greater longevity, expert installation or dependable aftercare. The opportunity is not simply to look premium, but to make otherwise invisible quality something consumers can see, feel or experience.
Fundamentally, the opportunity is to turn “why pay more?” from a defensive question into a positive aspiration. Fishwife makes tinned fish feel culturally alive. Story mfg. treats natural variation as proof of process rather than defect. Maker’s Mark turns inefficient hand-dipping into a signature of care. These cues work because they move against the norm and reveal the human judgement, specificity and commitment behind the brand. As AI makes polished, optimised and easily copied outputs more abundant, those qualities become more valuable signals of difference. Mass brands need to make their extra thought, expertise, time, standards or service visible and worth paying for.
Three ways to apply luxury cues at scale
But how can brands truly ‘luxe up’ whilst meeting the realities of margin protection and mass production? We’ve thought about three moves you can explore today:
1. Elevate an everyday moment.
Choose one familiar occasion and make it noticeably more rewarding through a better sensory experience, fit, finish or ritual. For FMCG this could mean a more intense flavour or satisfying texture, a better-feeling material in apparel, or packaging and presentation that makes a routine purchase feel considered – without changing the whole range.
The 1992 Flake ad will always come to mind when I think about brands who have done this well. I’d be curious to see how this might be brought to life today.
2. Turn invisible value into visible proof.
Bring ingredients, sourcing, testing, durability, repairability or expert design decisions forward through the pack, label, product page or in-store experience. Use concrete, visual evidence and credible collaborations rather than generic premium claims.
UNIQLO’s partnership with material-science specialist Toray is a strong example: through HEATTECH and public ‘Art and Science of LifeWear’ exhibitions, it turned the largely invisible engineering inside everyday fabric into a tangible reason to believe and pay more.
3. Build in one scalable signature of human intent.
Protect or add a distinctive detail that is ownable to your brand and signals judgement, care or specificity without undermining mass economics. That might be a chef-developed flavour, a visible finishing detail, deliberately limited (and weird!) flavours, colour drops, localised edits or clearer styling guidance. The aim is not handmade production, but one repeatable brand quirk that feels intentional and designed to make people stop and smile.
Pepsico owned Walkers revival of ‘Do Us A Flavour’ shows how a mass brand can make more peculiar ideas work at scale – with flavours such as Salt & Pepper Chicken and Grilled Cheese & Chilli Jam hitting shelves nationwide this year. The production model remained entirely mainstream, but each pack carried the specificity of a real person’s idea of an incredibly human indulgence.
Cutting prices won’t win the argument against private label, but making your value impossible to miss can. The brands that thrive will be those that show the thought, care and expertise behind what they make.
Ready to explore what ‘luxe-ing up’ could mean for your brand? Get in touch to start the conversation.
About the author
- Helen Donald
- Managing Director, STRAT7 Advisory
Helen leads STRAT7’s growth and innovation consulting practice and has overseen major global innovation programmes across FMCG, health and consumer goods. She specialises in running high velocity, insight driven innovation processes that blend cultural understanding, commercial rigour and human centred thinking.
