Golden Casket is a Scottish confectionery business, home to brands with roots stretching back to 1856. Two of those brands, Buchanan's and Hills Hawick Balls, carry genuine heritage and loyal audiences. The ambition was to make both relevant to today's consumer, giving them the premium and contemporary packaging they needed to reach new markets and new shelves.

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The situation

Golden Casket had a clear commercial goal: to unlock distribution in tourist retail, travel trade locations, and airport concessions. To do that, the packaging needed to work harder. It needed to feel premium and contemporary - something worth picking up in a gift shop or departure lounge, while remaining unashamedly Scottish. Both brands had a story - the packaging needed to tell it.

What Smiddy Marketing delivered

Smiddy Marketing led the creative brief and directed the design process, working in collaboration with Hutton Design to deliver two distinct packaging projects.

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For the Buchanan's Souvenir Range, the central idea was simple and strong: a postcard you can eat. The result is bright, contemporary packaging that pairs recognisable Scottish location photography with a bold colour identity across three variants, each with its own palette and its own tartan drawn to complement the colours of that pack. Gold foil embossing across all three variants lifts the range above standard gift shop fare and gives it a tactile quality that earns its place commercially as much as aesthetically.

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The tartan was used as a designed element rather than a default, avoiding the stereotypical shortbread-tin territory that can trip up a lot of Scottish packaging.

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For Hills Hawick Balls, a different direction entirely. Rather than colour blocking and tartan, the design is led by illustration communicating a spirit of endurance, of hillwalkers and adventurers, of lasting longer than anyone expects, giving the pack its personality.

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The Hawick Ball's story and identity are rooted in the character of the town of Hawick, the sweet, and the culture that has grown up around it. The result stands apart from the Buchanan's range while sitting comfortably alongside it on the shelf.

What it unlocked

Both ranges were newly launched to market, opening up new distribution opportunities across tourist retail locations nationwide. The packaging gives both brands a more credible platform to reach consumers they previously couldn’t access.

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^{Design and product photography delivered in collaboration with Hutton Design.}