Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is an excerpt from an article from the Joel Rubinson on Marketing Research blog.
Remember when retail coffee brands ruled the roost? The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup. The world cups of Maxwell House. The iconic El Exigente for Savarin coffee? Now all the cup of joe mojo is with Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts, with a bit of Keurig thrown in.
Where did the big CPG companies go wrong? How did they become commoditized brands in comparison to the high levels of attachment that people have to the coffee house brands? How can they get it back?
Now, before you say, "Well, Folgers and Maxwell House are packaged goods brands bought in stores so that is why no one talks about them or searches for them online," consider Red Bull, which leverages the same desires as the ritualistic coffee in the morning leverages. It is also bought in a store rather than a coffee house but it has 27 million fans on Facebook, gets 8,000 or so tweets per day, and has 10 times the number of trademark searches on Google.
You would think that many more people drink Starbucks or Red Bull in the morning than Folgers and Maxwell House, but I believe it is the other way around. Consumers just don't care as much about it, but they should. In fact, digital and social media marketing is built to make people care about the brands they buy.
Here are six principles for marketing in a digital age to get people to care about a classic CPG brand again:
- Define your competitive marketplace beyond the brands next to you on the shelf. Brands in the digital and social world compete in a mental marketplace to become forces of attraction for lifestyles, behaviors, and interests.
- Become the expert. Encourage people to seek you out for guidance.
- Create a content strategy to bring your values and expertise to life.
- Make search the focal point and acid test. If you use the key words that describe your brand expertise, you should be on the first page of organic search results for each search term.
- Turn expertise into joining. Once you stand out for something that a segment of consumers really care about, encourage them to join your brand on Facebook, Twitter, and to talk about you.
- Turn every one of these performance goals (Facebook, Twitter, search, etc.) into metrics to define success.
Branding advantage comes from you becoming the leading expert on something central to that person's lifestyle.