Packard Bell to reposition as a "trendy" lifestyle brand

Wants to be a "cool product"

19 September 2008 17:05 GMT / By Verity Burns

Packard Bell is set to reposition itself as a trendy design-focused lifestyle brand, following its acquisition by Acer last year.

Speaking at Acer’s Global Press Conference, Emmanuel Fromont, Vice President of Packard Bell Sales and Marketing, said:

"It’s not a totally new positioning. We’ve always differentiated ourselves through design, but as a smaller company and having to do the design in-house, it was more difficult."

"Now with Acer behind us, we want to create aficionado fans of our products. We want people to have real desire for our brand."

Pocket-lint spoke to Acer UK country manager Bobby Watkins, and he told us that the new designs for Packard Bell were something we should look out for when they become available sometime next year.

"The chassis’ have been designed by designers – not computer experts - and they look stunning", he said. "It’s really exciting, I think there will be a really positive reaction from consumers."

For some idea into the look Packard Bell is going for, the design brief was the idea that: "Packard Bell gives you easy access to all of your digital content and media with a cool product that reflects who you are, your accomplishments and the pleasure you derive from 'being part of it'".

From this, the company has said it decided the core values for the new designs were to be: elegance, alchemy ("a mixture of science and magic, to generate emotion"), magic lights (the idea of using light as a "body language of the product"), graceful lines and transparency.

Certainly, some of these design ideas are already visible, particularly in the company’s gaming machines. However, it seems we’ll have to wait until at least Q1 next year before we see any of Packard Bell’s newly designed products.