Our Clients & Client Case Studies

Our Clients

When you work with us, we put our diverse experience and deep knowledge of business organizations to good use for you. You can see our experience working to improve marketing performance and profitability spans across B2C and B2B companies, categories, industries, business models, and marketing, sales, and research functions:

Selected Industry Experience

Amusement Parks Automobiles
Beer Building and Construction Materials
Business Services Colleges and Universities
Computer Hardware and Software Credit Cards
Energy Companies Entertainment
Fashion Fast Food
Financial Services Food Companies
Gasoline and Lubricants Health and Beauty Aids
Hospitals/Healthcare Hospitality and Travel
Industrial Gases Industry Trade Groups
Insurance Manufacturing
Media Medical Instruments
Museums Not-for-Profit Organizations
Packaged Goods Pharmaceuticals
Real Estate/Retail Properties Restaurants
Retail Solar and Wind Power
Soft Drinks & Water Telecommunications
Tobacco Transportation
Wine and Spirits  

 

Client Case Studies

We have a big book of case studies that describe the kind of work we’ve done and impact we’ve had on our client’s business. Below you’ll find a cross-section of firms, marketing problems, and results of our work as some food for thought on what we can do for your business.

For a complete book of case studies, contact Ami Bowen at Copernicus Marketing Consulting.

In the mid-1990s, Mobil, now ExxonMobil, was at a crossroads with its service station business. New low-price brands began showing up everywhere, and the major brands started to work hard to differentiate themselves, with an aim toward gaining more margin from the business. Mobil commissioned Copernicus to better understand its customers and prospects. The results of Copernicus’ work formed the basis of what continues to be one of the most exciting strategies ever launched—the Mobil Friendly Serve Campaign.

Copernicus found five distinct consumer groups, all roughly the same size numerically, but with vastly different shares of potential profitability. Representing 38 percent of the population and 77 percent of potential profitability, Car Buffs and Loyalists were clearly the financially optimal target groups. Once Mobil knew the target, it knew whom to talk to and where to find them, how to communicate with them, in which media, about which products, at what price. Sales and profitability dramatically increased—and continue to—in service stations that implemented Friendly Serve.

Saks Fifth Avenue

In deadlock competition with Bloomingdales, Neiman Marcus, and Nordstrom, upscale retailer Saks Fifth Avenue wanted to find a way to get ahead and stay ahead of the pack.  For years, the company had invested a substantial portion of its marketing money on programs aimed at what it consider to be its very best customers, yet it had not seen dramatic increases in its share of wallet.  It also needed a way to integrate the information it had about customers with a block-level census to produce more efficient direct marketing programs and guide store merchandising decisions.  

Working with Copernicus, Saks soon discovered that the “best customers” it had focused on were also the best customers of all of its competitors.  They were simply fashion-forward, high-powered, wealthy women who spent quite a bit of money on clothing and fashion and, with no particular affinity of one or another, spread it around to different stores. 

Copernicus helped Saks identify clear segments among its base of customers, bearing in mind that the end result had to tie into internal and external databases for direct marketing and merchandising purposes. With a better picture of its most profitable customers AND what their needs/wants/desires/motivations were, Saks beefed up its brand strategy and merchandising efforts. The fuller picture of the needs of each segment also helped sharpen the retailer’s product strategy and led to one of the most successful new retail concepts in recent years, Saks Off Fifth.

Seven years ago, Green Mountain Energy, a small electric power company in Burlington, VT, came to Copernicus with an interesting question: would Copernicus be willing to work with Green Mountain to create a new brand of kilowatt hours in an increasingly deregulated environment. Copernicus was and the rest is history.

Conventional wisdom held that electric power was a commodity, where price was the only attribute of importance. Copernicus found, however, that a significant portion of target buyers were concerned about pollution and environmental damage cause by coal-fired electric plants. Further investigation revealed that these same consumers would be willing to pay more for “clean, green” electric power. Green Mountain generated power from solar, wind, and hydro-electric sources and this lead to the development of a positioning, “clean, green power made from the raging rivers of North America, the prevailing winds, and the sun. No coal, no nukes, no kidding.”

The resulting marketing campaign received the International Energy Industry’s award for “Best Marketer of the Year” and Green Mountain quickly became the #1 brand of deregulated energy in the nation. The company was deluged with requests from businesses including Toyota, GM, Kinko’s and the GAP, and BP was so impressed, it bought a major stake in the company.

With an eye towards national expansion, Dunkin Donuts, the largest coffee and baked goods chain in the world, began to wonder whether its existing store concept would work across the U.S. or if it should make changes. The company had no shortage of ideas about what the company could do: serve sandwiches, offer catering and delivery, provide cozier seating, have a more sophisticated look, etc. It had little information about what customers want/need or what would make Dunkin’ the most profitable.

The company turned to Copernicus for help developing the “Dunkin Donuts of the future.” Copernicus used concept engineering to test more than two billion different configurations of product, service, and price and identified the impact of each item on visits, spending, and sales for different segments of customers. All the possible restaurant and menu combinations were reassembled to forecast visits and sales. The costs associated with different items were subtracted from estimated sales to provide a profitability assessment. Dunkin took the most profitable store concepts and built prototype stores which quickly exceeded objectives for customer satisfaction and sales, and were described in recent Boston Globe, "Dunkin Plots National Push," and Time Magazine, "Brand New Buzz," articles.

Brazil is the third largest beer market in the world with more than 30 different brands competing for share. Skol was the #4 player in a market dominated by two other major brands and was barely eeking out a profit. Brahma, the brand’s owners now part of Inbev, called in to Copernicus to see if the brand could be saved.

Copernicus discovered Skol, like most other brands in the market, had no specific consumer target or clear, differentiating positioning. Brahma had only a small marketing budget to put behind the brand, so needed to identify the most impactful media plan and advertising strategy to break through the clutter. On the B2B side, Skol was weak in on-premise channels such as bars and restaurants and needed a sales strategy that would bring distribution to a level competitive with the other leading brands. All of these things made for one big, hairy marketing problem for Skol and were really impeding the brand from realizing its full potential.

On the consumer side, Copernicus identified the most profitable people and occasion segments, a compelling positioning based on “smooth flavor,” media plan, and advertising campaign. With B2B, a marketing mix model helped the sales force better understand key distribution channels and redirect efforts. The results were transformational—Skol skyrocketed from the #4 position to the #1 position in its home market and doubled its market share. Today, the brand is the #3 beer brand in the world—without a drop sold in North America—and its brand manager has become CEO of Inbev, the world’s largest brewer and new owner of Anheuser-Busch.

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