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24 May ' 23:56
Amplify your product truth: Castle Lite
Using your core product to create distinctiveness is a great way of increasing penetration to drive growth. The trick is to 'bake' the brand story into the product, and then amplify this across the whole mix. A great example of this is the Castle Lite brand in South Africa, which has employed this approach to drive several years of double-digit volume growth.
The Castle Lite story brilliantly illustrates the idea of distinctiveness being more important than differentiation. One of the key benefits of beer is refreshment. If, like me, you’re a beer fan, nothing hits the spot like a nice cold beer. But surely this is a generic benefit and so not an interesting territory to play in? In fact, it’s a great place to play, if you can do what Julian Coulter and the Castle Lite team did, and come up with a distinctive way of bringing this benefit to life.
The brand’s idea was to sell not just any type of refreshment, but rather ‘ice cold’ refreshment. Now, even this idea could provoke a response of ‘Ice cold. Any brand could do that!’ And in theory, any brand could. However, Castle Lite executed brilliantly and at speed to create the memory structure linked to this idea, effectively taking this position and making it hard for another brand to copy it. The key to the success of Castle Lite is the way the ice cold refreshment product idea has been amplified across the whole marketing mix.
In-trade
To deliver the ice cold refreshment benefit, Castle Lite leveraged the incredible distribution system that brand owner SAB Miller has in South Africa. Hundreds of sales guys still visit individual taverns and pubs, and work on in-trade display and product presentation. This allowed Castle Lite to introduce Ice Cold Fridges into outlets. This ensured the product was served ice cold to deliver maximum refreshment. It has an additional and very important benefit of dramatically improving the in-trade visibility of the brand.
Communication
A clever bit of creative magic is the next part of the Castle Lite success story. TV advertising was used to amplify the ice cold refreshment idea. Importantly, this communication brought to life the ice cold fridge as a distinctive visual property. It featured a poor bar man struggling to hold the Castle Lite beer as it was ice cold, throwing it backwards and forwards from hand to hand. The ad used a retro music track, ‘Can’t touch this’, from MC Hammer who even appeared at the end of the ad. The beauty of this commercial, which you can watch here, is telling a simple product story in a highly entertaining and memorable way.
Packaging
The ice cold refreshment idea was also brought to life on the bottle, with a ‘snow flake’ device. This additional brand property was used to indicate when the beer was ice cold, tuning blue when the bottle is cooled to -4 degrees.
Activation
Finally, the brand’s activation is aligned to bring to life and amplify the ice cold refreshment. For the off-trade outlets, such as bottle shops, uses promotions which are appealing to both customers and consumers and further bring to life the product truth, such as patio coolers (this is South Africa remember!), mini fridges and ice boxes. And the brand ran a contest where people win a trip to, you guessed it, the world’s biggest ice bar.
In conclusion, Castle Lite is a great example of baking your brand story into your product, and then creating distinctive brand properties that you amplify across the whole mix.
May 25, 2012
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23 May ' 08:24
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21 May ' 22:05
Nivea - now that's memory structure
Hot on the tails of my last post on Red Bull editions breaking the "memory stucture" of the brand, here's an example of how to stick to what made you famous.
You don't get much more iconic than the little blue tin at the heart of the Nivea brand.
Check out 100 years of packaging below. Interestingly, it only went blue in 1925, 14 years after launch.
And just look at the pack from 1959. The same equties have been used for over 50 years:
- Blue colour
- Nivea name in upper case
- Creme written in same typeface
- Same round tin
- Pure and clean, apart from the little on-pack flash in 1993
A great example of how to reinforce and nurture the brand properties of your core product.
May 22, 2012 Comments (0)
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21 May ' 11:11
Survey: Can Social Media Show you the Money?
If you get a minute, could you please take 60 seconds to do our 5th annual brandgym survey: "Can Social Media Show you the Money?"
Click below to take the survey:
http://tinyurl.com/bgymSocialMediaSurvey
We are trying to cut through the hype and hysteria around social media, to figure out how it can help "SMS" (sell more stuff), as regular readers will know!
May 21, 2012 Comments (0)
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20 May ' 07:44
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19 May ' 09:56
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18 May ' 03:28
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17 May ' 07:39
Will Editions give Red Bull wings?
On a trip to Switzerland last week I saw the bizarre bit of branding which is Editions, the new range extension from Red Bull: Silver (lime), Blue (blueberry) and Red (cranberry). The range was also launched in Germany last September.
I'm really not sure this will give the sales of Red Bull wings. Let's have a look why.
Addressing a barrier to trial?
Let's start with the good stuff first. The role of core range extension can be to overcome barrier to trial. And perhaps Editions addresses such a barrier by changing the taste of the product? I'm not a big Red Bull drinker, but I have heard that some people like the energy it offers, but not the taste. As the advertising for Editions states, it offers "New tastes, same energy".
However, even if the new taste benefit is relevant, the problem is whether people will pick it off the shelf...which brings us to the next point.
Breaking memory structure, not building on it
Editions' bizzare branding fails to build on one of the world's strongest identities. The Red Bull visual identity is very powerful and helps you find Red Bull on auto-pilot. It has several key elements, none of which are used in Editions:
RED BULL vs. EDITIONS
1. The 4-quadrant design vs. Block of colour
2. Red, silver, blue vs. Red or silver or blue
3. The two clashing bulls in the middle vs. Bit of one bull
4. Red Bull name in red, centrally positioned vs. Red Bull small, vertical on the side
By breaking all these codes, it looks on shelf like there are three new products called Blue, Silver and Red.
Creating fresh consistency
The challenge with Editions, as with any range extension, is balancing two conflicting objectives:
1. Freshness: to make the new range stand out
2. Consistency: to build on the brand memory structure
In the case of Editions freshness clearly won the day.
A better balance was achieved with the sugar free version. This kept three of the four key elements of the brand identity (quadrants, name and bull), changing only the colours. This means you can distinguish the two versions on shelf, but it still looks like Red Bull.
In conclusion, Red Bull Editions shows the challenge of creating fresh consistency with range extension design. In my view, Editions has gone too far towards freshness, and this will reduce the ease of shopping at the shelf.
It will be interesting to see the decision of UK marketing director, Huib van Bockel. He was quoted in Marketing this week as being in the process of deciding "if and when" to launch Editions.
May 17, 2012 Comments (0)
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15 May ' 16:30
"Why Successful Branding Still Happens Offline"
My view that the importance of online social media is vastly over-blown was backed up today by a WJS article forwared to me by Anne, our Managing Partner in Amsterdam.
The opening paragraph by authors Ed Keller and Brad Fay got me nodding vigorously:
"Online social networks are far from the Holy Grail of marketing.
For brands that want to be social and generate conversation, a far bigger and more powerful force is real world, face-to-face conversation."
Here are a few nuggets from the article.
1. Offline word-of-mouth is bigger and better
Ed and Brad have done research showing that online social media is actually not that important for word-of-mouth. They say "90% of word-of-mouth conversations about brands take place offline, primarily face-to-face, in people’s homes and offices, in restaurants and stores, really anywhere people congregate".
Furthermore, they found the quality of offline word-of-mouth is higher, not only the quantity: "These conversations bring greater credibility, a greater desire to share with others, and a great likelihood to purchase the products being discussed than conversations that take place online."
2. Most online conversations don't go viral
Sellers of social media rave about how social media is “word of mouth on steroids", with conversations spreading like wildfire to hundreds or even thousands of people. However, Ed and Brand point out that "Most links that are shared reach only 5-10 people".
They also quote the same data I posted on showing that 99% of Facebook likers of a brand page have no involvement with it at all.
3. Paid-for advertising sparks conversation
The article suggests that "The biggest and most productive channel to spark conversation is not online social media, but paid advertising." They go on to say say that 25% of brand conversations include a specific reference to ad advert.
And guess which type of advertising is the single biggest driver of conversation. Yup. Good old TV advertising. The authors say: "Far from being a dinosaur, television and other traditional media play a key role in today’s social marketplace." Indeed, most of the recent examples of viral online success were driven by TV advertising: Old Spice, Yeo Valley and John Lewis to name a few. See my earlier post on "TV is still the King" here for more on this point.
3. Make your marketing worth talking about
I agree 100% with the suggestion on how to get talked about in a social age: "Start a story that consumers will want to talk about." Great and memorable marketing will get talked about and so make your brand more top-of-mind, as has always been the case.
The one bit where I disagree is the authors' suggestion to "Tap the right talkers... the consumer influencers in your category, and your brand advocates?". In research quoted here by Duncan Watts, 95% of word-of-mouth messages studied did not pass through influencers he called "super conductor" consumers. Duncan says: "Influentials don't govern person-to-person communication. We all do."
In conclusion, if you cut through the hype the key to conversation is the same as it always has been: create memorable, impactful and well branded marketing that gets people talking face-to-face.
May 15, 2012 Comments (0)
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14 May ' 21:33
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