Marketing Best Practice of September

Take the Pain Out of the Process of Finding "New" Brand News That Will Generate Sales and Profits

It’s a yearly task every brand manager, especially those in low-growth categories, absolutely dreads: coming up with new brand news, a.k.a. the little somethin’ somethin’ that’ll give buyers a reason to buy more or maybe even switch brands.  Throw in the added challenge of doing it with the same or, as is often the case, less of a budget to work with than the year before and you have your basic brand management nightmare.

With heavy hearts, brand managers often pull from the standard stable of tactical tools—price promotions, retail promotions, contests, maybe some sort of packaging change, or new flavor or feature often positioned as a “line extension.”   Take the case of Kraft, the world’s #2 food company that counts the likes of Oreo, Jell-O, Cool-Whip and Kraft Mac N’ Cheese amongst the storied brands in its portfolio.  The company found itself struggling after introducing a few too many line extensions of its biggest brands which failed to resonate with consumers.   Said Kraft’s current senior vice president of new products Bob Becker, “A line extension is usually a new flavor or size that may create some news but it doesn’t grow the business.”  

Instead of line extensions, this time around Kraft is looking to boost sales across the many well-established categories in which it operates by increasing marketing spending; reformulating products including Oscar Meyer wieners with no artificial flavors, colors or fillers; and by making existing products more convenient and portable with new formats—an aerosol can of Cool-whip instead of the tub, for example—and shelf space—Cool-whip will be in the refrigerator aisle instead of just the freezer section.  Great that Kraft wants to spend more money on marketing, but we wonder if these incremental changes will really do much for their brands from a big picture perspective. 

The downside with the well-worn tactics is that everyone else uses them, including competitors. So where’s the new? Maybe they work in the short term—sales increase—but it makes marketers’ jobs very hard in the long-term—the tactics aren’t helping to boost loyalty or solidify a position in the marketplace for the brand.

May we suggest these three tips that will help you develop “new” brand news that builds your bottom-line and just as importantly, your brand equity at the same time.

#1.  Get Creative with Research.  Instead of expending all your creative energies on a big-ticket giveaway promotion, outta-left-field contests, or some sort of buy-one-get-two pricing scheme, get the juices flowing about marketing research.  Consider research that will enhance your creative thinking about your brand.  For instance, what are the “white space” opportunities—the areas where there’s a big gap between what people want and what they are getting in the category—for your brand?  What are new positioning and messaging opportunities?  Virtually every brand—even really well-established brands in the most commoditized categories—has a wealth of positioning opportunities, a.k.a., characteristics to which consumers will respond.  There’s target market characteristics—“the brand for would-be athletes,” for example, “for working moms”, etc.—occasions or situations, social responsibility that could all be potential positioning opportunities.  Use research to investigate and explore these things and find out what motivates buyers.  We know that “creativity” and “research” rarely appear in the same sentence, but that needs to change. 

#2.  Join the Club.  One of the hottest concepts in marketing today is the idea of a “brand fan,” the folks who are open/responsive to, supportive of, and maybe even impassioned by your brand.  There’s a spectrum of fandom, of course, among your current and prospective customers.  If they’re not using your brand already, fan-types are at least willing to consider it. They’re willing to try it.  If they’re already using it, they will try a line extension.  Big fans might even tell other people about your brand and recruit other people to join the fan club.  Meanwhile, disinterested spectators or detractors are not worth your time to try to win over—they wouldn’t take a free sample if you handed it to them on the street. So get to know the members of your fan club—they are the most likely to respond to new news that’s relevant, meaningful, and targeted to their needs, desires, interests, etc. 

You CAN capture “fandom” in a variety of ways—loyalty, engagement, responsiveness, and more—so you needn’t rely on gut instinct to identify and try to reach this group.  Take a variety of demos, attitudes, needs, etc.,—in other words, variables you use in your garden-variety segmentation exercise—and test them to see which are related to these measures.  You’ll have a really good indication of which buyer group is predisposed to your new brand news and what kind of news they’d like to hear.

#3. Uncover the Emerging Need.  Anyone can WATCH trends, but not everyone can TRANSLATE them into relevant and unique new news for your brand.  Take a group of customers that holds good future business opportunities for your business and ask them, what are your needs, wants, and dreams?

Next consider how the greater social trends at large will heighten and support these needs and wants—what’s on the horizon that might impact the target in terms of how they are thinking and feeling, what they are looking for, the emphasis they place on different attributes and benefits a brand offers?  Now ask target buyers how they perceive your brand and competitors in terms of solving the emerging needs.  Identify an up-and-coming, ahead-of-the-curve opportunity that is woefully lacking at the moment and you have yourself some really compelling and—get this—SUSTAINABLE new news about your brand.

Our main message here: take a step back from the tactics and think about how to make your brand stronger.  New news that works for the brand comes from good solid insights into buyers, not best guesses about promotions and packaging changes.

Back to Discoveries of the Month