If you stand in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, you can sometimes smell the coffee roasting at the old roasting plant in-town. The decades-old coffee brand began to feel a little watered down after years of relying on the trade to keep the brand fresh in consumer's minds. In 2005, brand managers at Reily Foods decided to address the consumer directly with a new position.
Snowden Tatarski studied the situation and offered a strategy solution that would turn around a seven year sales slump. A review of existing research was conducted highlighting consumers’ feelings concerning the coffee, most notably, honest, no frills and heritage. Snowden Tatarski studied the consumer verbatim and characteristics of the geographic footprint. The ensuing strategy is what we like to call the "anti-bucks" approach.
The anti-bucks position asserts that the current state of the coffee sector is heavily weighted towards youth and youth-based urban yearnings. A huge portion of coffee drinkers have been left out as their trusted old brand scurried to create "coffeehouse selections" that come with a complimentary CD of alternative rock.
JFG's position could not be simpler. Tired of the hip, Euro coffee culture? Like a simple honest cup of coffee? Prefer a large instead of a Venti? Then fill your cup with JFG; for those who simply want a great cup of coffee.
The television commercial was pretested at the Marketing Workshop in Atlanta and broke nearly every record for changing brand preference in the testing facility’s 30 year history. When the spot hit the air, television stations received repeat requests for the spot and the spot’s music, an original track composed and performed by Atlanta musician Ben Holst. The commercial and an accompanying sponsorship were given credit for returning the brand to profitability and charting a new path for continued success.
The consumer packaged goods industry is quite possibly one of my favorite industries. I imagine the appeal is due to the fact that packaged goods have a nearly transcendent power. For starters, nearly everyone has access to packaged goods of some description. One need not be wealthy or privileged to have special access to the brand of coffee, hot sauce or paper towel of their choice. Packaged goods allow for open access and ability to have a mass audience, which makes the sector both fun and challenging for me and this firm. Another major attractor and reason for my affinity of the packaged goods industry has to do with the ability of the packaged good to lend a hand in the way consumers brand themselves by the products they buy. I fondly remember my days in college when my fraternity brothers proudly proclaimed they would use Dale’s sauce when barbecuing or nothing at all. At times my friends would brag that if they went to the grocery store and didn’t find Dale’s, they would go to another store rather than by a competitor. It was that important to them.
This firm's first foray in the packaged goods industry came in interesting manner. A major packaged goods company had several waning brands that had begun to erode share in their major markets. We were contacted by CEO of this company who came to us with two brands, one of which has started to lose share in metro Atlanta and the other of which had spent the past seven consecutive years losing share in its primary markets of Tennessee and North Carolina.
When teaching and lecturing, I try to point out to students the significance of such a scenario. The fact that the product has lost market share for seven consecutive years does not mean a product is losing appeal and on a slow downward spiral. A product that consecutively loses year after year means that every year a new marketing plan has been proposed, perhaps at a sales conference or meeting of the corporate mind, and every year that marketing plan has failed to elevate the brand and produce upward growth for the company.
The consumer packaged goods industries face many challenges in our current economy. The competition of private labels has exploited a weakness in strong brands. Once proud brand icons and identities have now been shuffled among the myriad of choices offered by retailers and value chains.
Another issue facing the packaged goods industries is a reliance on the way things used to be done. I am constantly surprised at the outdated tactics that are suggested as new ideas while building strategies to promote packaged goods. I have worked on particular brands were the solution offered was a series of freestanding inserts with the occasional television commercial and a lot of slotting fees. It is the reliance on these outdated methods that has allowed brands to slip and ultimately become to become forgettable in the eyes of consumers.
Our position on packaged and consumer goods marketing is to move the orientation away from product attribute and price into lifestyle and identification. Consumers are given more choices than ever to express themselves through the products they buy. Additionally, consumers have more incentive than ever to express and brand themselves through the product choices they make.
I was approached with a particular brand of coffee which had been losing market share for many years. Our task was to rebrand the coffee without changing the name or logo and build a new persona which consumers would find desirable. The research led us into the unique characteristics concerning the brand. For starters, the brand had existed for 75 years as a staple of the communities that were our primary market. Secondly, the brand had a very charismatic founding and founder that led to a very homegrown image. Third was an existing situation in the market. A cursory view of the market showed us that the coffee market had grown more and more European with popular brands of coffee measuring themselves in grande sizes and popular packaged goods offering European blends. Our team theorized that a solution must exist which is counter to the very urban and European leanings of our competitors. We created a position termed “antique box” which celebrates the real down-home assets of Appalachian America. The coffee would be positioned as a flagship leading consumers in the self celebration.
The materials were remarkably simple. We developed a print ad with the line “this is no place for a lock,” which was set in small type over image of a man fishing in the middle of a broad stream. The image was captivating. It truly summed up the feelings that there's got to be a coffee that celebrates the real people that make up the footprint of our product. Next, a television commercial showed scenes of people enjoying coffee in everyday situations that uniquely celebrated Appalachian Americana: a young mother and her child a dock with the mother consuming a couple coffee while the child threw rocks into the water, men fly-fishing in the middle of the river while sipping on a cup of coffee, a man on a tractor stopping in order to accept a cup of coffee from his wife. The images conjured up feelings of history, relatedness, and a sense of belonging. For the music, we commissioned a local composer to create a track that would embody all of the same feelings in essence from the shots. Once the spot began to run it was obviously that the music was the perfect accompaniment.
As with many large efforts and packaged goods we pretested the spots in Atlanta. The results were astounding. The testing company commented that the commercial had exceeded the levels of ability to change brand preference more than any measure they had ever seen before in 25 years of testing commercials. When we began to run the commercial, requests flooded television stations seeking copies of the commercial and the music. Needless to say, the commercial was a hit.
Marketers should seek to develop the entire customer relationship with the product and not simply the customer's interaction with the product attributes. While it is important to integrate attributes into the customer's experience (for is the attributes that legitimize a sales claim), they have too long been the main sales point and allow competitive products with similar characteristics to essentially rob any brand affinity which is built from an attribute basic. It is wiser instead to create a brand persona which draws in consumers and adequately ties the attributes to the consumers. The future is very bright indeed for packaged goods that create strong brands and support those brands with its distinct sales system. Those who ignore the need of adequate branding will need to become content with sitting on the shelf.