New brands over old

New Brands 7 Old Brands 3
By Paul Herbig

Consumers are embracing new brands at the expense of more established brands, researchers say. The difficulty brands face in differentiating themselves in ways that are meaningful to consumers is an outgrowth of this finding. That newer brands are showing up and replacing older brands must serve as a warning to established brands to consolidate their customer base or risk seeing newer, trendier brands appropriate their customers and markets. Some examples are Google superseding Microsoft and Verizon overwhelming ATT. Meanwhile Starbucks falls—it is yesterday’s brands, old news.

Your customer's conception of your brand is formed from his first

experience or "imprint" with your company, or more generally, with the

products you sell. But emotion is required to instill a strong memory. So one way to regroup and win the brand wars, to take back what newer brands have conquered from you, is to be fixated on the emotional aspect of your brand. Folgers Coffee, for instance, was able to make use of the first impression consumers had with coffee, which is its scent. People smell the product when they are children, long before they're old enough to drink it. The scent becomes linked in a person's mind with his mother making coffee in the kitchen as she prepares to feed him. Almost all coffee drinkers love the smell of it, while only considerably fewer drink it because they like the taste. So Folgers created an ad campaign centered on the smell rather than taste of its product. This is the reason that commercials for Folgers focus on the customer opening the package and
savoring the scent, rather than on the actual experience of drinking
it.


The main reason a scent linked with family and the consumer's mother is

so powerful is that the home is part of a category of subconscious motivations termed "reptilian," meaning they are prehistoric instincts geared towards survival and reproduction into the next generation. These are the most compelling motivations. The reptilian always wins when people are trying to figure
out what to do. The second class of motivation is "limbic," or governed by the limbic system in the brain that controls emotion. This is the category of motivations where the differences in how men and women react to products and advertising campaigns can be seen. While men are akin to a simple box with an on/off switch, women are more like a box that has multiple options to choose from.


Some reasons for brands being "revived" and a few examples:

1. Some products die because they lose novelty, and novelty is part of
why people buy. So they are revived after a period of time because
novelty can be present again. TV shows like Scooby Doo reflect this
(and some movies). Fashion products are the same... lots of fads
come and go. The rationale seems to be similar to the TV
rationale... a fad/fashion loses novelty after a while, but can come
back later.

2. Some products are deficient and the brand goes away but is revived
when the product gets fixed. Red M&Ms are not a brand, but
illustrates a product that was deficient. The original Red M&Ms had a
dye that the FDA said was unhealthy. So Red M&Ms were taken off the
market 30 years ago. But later a new dye was developed that was safe, so Red M&Ms came back. The new Maytag Neptune Washing machines are another example. The old front-load washers died out because they were technologically deficient... they sometimes leaked water and were replaced by top-load washers. But the leak problems were solved, and front-load washers require less water and have been revived a bit.

3. Some markets are stimulated with a new product, and that revives the
category and with the category some brands. An example is
coin collecting. Coin collecting in the US used to be more popular...
but almost died out. Then the country started to mint quarters from
each state, and coin collecting was revived somewhat, along with coin
collecting binders from companies that never quite died... so these
coin collecting tools were revived. The recent stimulation of diet
programs helped revive some brands that had lost steam, so that's
another example. A few poker chip brands are dominant and they have
been revived recently because of greater interest in poker, stoked by
the recent hold-um fad.

4. Some brands lose distribution and then are "revived" when
distribution muscle returns. An interesting example is Quisp cereal.
Quisp has been around for decades but distribution was scaled back
many years ago. The brand languishes but is still produced... you can
collect Quisp boxes online. Every now and then the
manufacturer needs a boost in cereal revenue and distributes the
product more heavily. So the brand is kept from death, and is revived
periodically for short gains.

Keep your brand fresh and it will keep your revenues fresher.


Paul Herbig is the Managing Partner of Herbig Marketing Associates, (www.herbigandsons.com) a nationally renown marketing consulting company and former Professor Marketing and Dean, Ketner School of Business for Tri-State University. He can be contacted at mktgandme@aol.com.