A brand was very successful and profitable. This brand started as a small, exclusive brand that catered to upscale consumers with refined tastes and was built slowly through innovative and creative direct marketing efforts.
The brand had a wonderful story to tell and it told that story effectively. Communications included a compelling offer to which consumers responded.
Over time, this brand continued to grow at a slow but steady pace while loyalty amongst its customers grew to a point where they became fanatical about the brand and did not miss an opportunity to talk about the brand to their friends and recommend the brand to them. Word of mouth was strong and favorable. Customers were almost exclusively repeat customers who purchased the brand at regular intervals. The brand was highly profitable.
Then one day, a much larger company targeted the brand and bought it so they could add it to their portfolio. Attracted by the customer loyalty and profitability of the brand, Mega Conglomerated Corp., Inc. figured that if they plugged this relatively small brand into its mega wide distribution and supported it with mega mass marketing and mega advertising that they could expect a mega multiplier return on the profit number.
Mega Conglomerated Corp., Inc. immediately ceased the campy direct marketing efforts and started a campaign to promote the brand through much sexier and slicker mass advertising and in-store promotions throughout its distribution network of thousands of retail stores where the product was now available. After all, it figured, if this brand was successful before, it would be much more successful with the right marketing support that would put it in front of a mass audience who would overwhelmingly respond and purchase it willingly and more easily from a local retail store.
And then it happened.
Sales dropped. Loyalty tanked. The brand started bleeding red ink. Panic set in at Mega Conglomerated Corp., Inc. and fingers were pointed in all directions to explain why.
Through it all, not a single thing changed about the physical product itself.
What's the moral of this story?
There are many significant things to be learned.
A brand is much more than the physical product itself. A brand is an entity that makes a promise of value. This promise can speak in terms of quality, reliability, superiority, style of dialog and exclusivity--not just functionality and certainly not just features.
A brand that appeals to a niche market may do so precisely because those consumers are looking for a brand that is off the beaten path and cannot be found just anywhere. Consumers might want a brand that does not have mass appeal because it makes them feel like they have found an exclusive, superior brand that is not for the common folk. It makes them feel special because they have to take a few extra steps to purchase the product. Something that they, unlike others, are willing to do.
A brand might be successful precisely because it is marketed in a particular manner to a particular audience and trying to sell it to the masses will strip away the very reasons the original audience bought it in the first place.
This story also teaches us that we must thoroughly understand our brands' sources of equity before we change anything about them. Consumer insight is critical and decisions cannot be made in a vacuum or be driven by arrogance and greed. We should be willing to be humbled by a smaller brand doing things right and accept the fact that maybe, just maybe, we can learn something from it.
Sometimes the least sexy marketing and promotion for a brand is actually the best for it.
Thinking about transitioning to a mass scale for your brand might be a trap. Some brands are better suited to go deeper and grow slowly rather than go broad and grow rapidly. How do you know? Get to know your brand and understand what its sources of equity are.
Lastly, sometimes the owner of the brand is as critical to the success or failure of the brand as anything else. It might be this last fact that is hardest for us to accept.
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