What Sort of Sausage Is Your Development?

This morning I found myself photographing sausages in my local Tesco.

Also pizzas, ibuprofen, yoghurt and grated cheese. Always in pairs: an entry-level version on one side, and what I'd call the premium one on the other. I got a few looks. I'd like to think they were admiring the composition.

It was the prices I was after, and they're quite something.

Same Pills, Different Box

Tesco's own-brand ibuprofen was 35p. Nurofen, on the shelf next to it, was £1.90.

Same active ingredient. Same dose. More than five times the price.

And plenty of us pick up the box on the right anyway. Not because anyone thinks Tesco has found a cheaper kind of ibuprofen, but because the name and the familiar packaging make it feel more trustworthy. Whole industries exist because that works.

There's a footnote, though. About ten years ago Nurofen sold Back Pain, Migraine and Period Pain versions in Australia, with exactly the same ibuprofen in every box. It cost them A$6 million. Packaging that claims a difference that isn't there tends to get caught in the end.

The Sausage Is Different

Sausages are another story. The entry-level pack was £1.79. Porky White were £3.80, and Heck were £5.

Here the premium is usually real. More meat, better meat, fewer things you'd rather not know about. Same with the pizza: £1.85 for the basic cheese one, £6.25 for Crosta & Mollica. Eat them side by side and you'd know which was which with your eyes shut.

But you can't eat them in the aisle. On the shelf, all you've got to go on is the box. So the premium brand's packaging isn't inventing a difference. It's making sure you notice one.

That's the version that matters for property.

The Other Way Round

Nobody opens a packet of ibuprofen before they buy it. An occupier or an investor absolutely opens the box. There are site visits, surveys, agents and months of due diligence. You can't sell a building on packaging alone, and nobody sensible would try.

In property, the more common problem is the opposite. A well-specified scheme, with better cladding, a more generous yard or landscaping someone has thought hard about, shown to the market through a perfectly adequate image straight from the architect's model. Nothing wrong with it. It just doesn't tell anyone what they're looking at.

A premium sausage in an own-brand wrapper.

Last week I wrote about finding what really makes a scheme different. This is the other half of it: once you know, telling people.

Now With Added Protein

The cheese aisle was my favourite. Creamfields grated mature cheddar was £1. Cathedral City was £1.89, and Cathedral City's high-protein shredded cheddar was £2.55.

Cheddar has always been one of the most protein-rich things in the fridge. It just didn't used to say so on the front. Now protein is what people are scanning the shelves for, so there it is, in large letters.

Property has its own protein. At the moment it might be an EPC A rating, net zero, serious power capacity, or a building designed around the wellbeing of the people working in it. Whatever occupiers are looking for this year, if a scheme genuinely has it, it belongs on the front of the pack, not on page fourteen of the specification.

And if it hasn't, see the Nurofen footnote.

Even Tesco Does Both

The yoghurt is the bit I keep coming back to. Creamfields Greek-style yoghurt was 95p. Tesco Finest was £2.50.

It turns out both are Tesco's. Creamfields is one of its budget brands, sold only in Tesco, with a name that sounds rather more like a farm than a supermarket. Finest is the top of the range. Same shop, two completely different identities, and Tesco knows exactly which pot each product belongs in.

That's a fair model for a development pipeline. Not every scheme needs the premium wrapper, and the own-brand approach is the right answer for plenty of projects. The aim isn't to make everything look premium. It's for the packaging to match what's inside. Plain is fine when the product is plain.

The expensive mistake is the good scheme that ends up in the plain tub by default.

So, what sort of sausage is your development?

If you think you've got a Heck in an own-brand wrapper, I'm always happy to take a look.

Until next week.

Rich

PS: The crème caramels didn't make the cut. Tesco's were £1.50 and Bonne Maman's were £3.20. I bought both, purely for research. The research is ongoing…