Book Extract: Shift thy target

Brands can break up with one consumer group and start a new relationship with a different one. It is difficult, but not impossible, says new book

Darryl Cobbin did not miss the cues. In the summer of 1991, as a newly minted MBA who had just accepted a job as an assistant brand manager at The Coca-Cola Company, he had one objective: to be assigned to the Sprite brand. If you were to look at where Sprite was at the time, you'd have to ask yourself why he was so enthusiastic about the brand. At the time, Sprite was a midsize soft drink brand that was being dominated in the lemon-lime category by 7UP, which was roughly three times larger. Sprite was a brand that was static, bordering on a decline. It had experienced zero or negative growth for nearly a decade. It wasn't as though Sprite was marketing to a group of individuals to whom Cobbin, as a twenty-seven-year-old African American male, felt that he could strongly relate. Sprite's consumer base (I won't even call them influencers) comprised what Coke called Home Category Managers (HCMs), what you and I would refer to as "moms," who were thirty-four and over. The HCMs received the bulk of Sprite's attention.

So why did Cobbin want Sprite? Well, he had seen a Sprite commercial on BET designed for the African American consumer market (AACM) that featured an early hip-hop group at the time, Heavy D and The Boys. In addition to the designated brand team, Coca-Cola had a separate marketing group that developed messaging for specific consumer groups, such as African Americans, Hispanics, and blue-collar consumers, for some of the company's major brands. This was a campaign that originated from the AACM group, but Cobbin realized that it was pushing the envelope for a relatively conservative company like Coke. The Sprite media buy against AACM was simply that - a media buy - probably less than 5 percent of the total budget, but Cobbin explains, "I thought to myself, if a company that size is willing to try this, there might be more freedom on this brand than Coca-Cola, where the brand manager is really the CEO."

Cobbin must have impressed the brass at Coke, because they granted him his wish. As he started his new job on Sprite, he discovered that there was an air of excitement around the building for the brand. A deal had just been completed with an upcoming movie and its lead actor that would create an association that was thought to be perfect for Sprite and its ongoing quest to win over HCMs. The hope was that it would reinvigorate the brand and put Sprite's romance with moms and the family back on track.

The movie that Sprite was pinning its hopes on to rekindle its relationship with its core consumer base was Home Alone 2, and the actor they would use was Macaulay Caulkin. This was a big, bold move for Sprite in 1991. It was the first major association of its kind for the brand. Sprite had never used celebrities before. Its messaging focused on the functional benefits of the great "Lymon" taste of Sprite that enabled people to express themselves (an emotional benefit) in unexpected ways.

Unfortunately, great things did not manifest. The brand remained stagnant. It wasn't experiencing a nosedive, mind you, but it just wasn't growing like a brand should with the kind of marketing that was being put behind it.

As the Home Alone 2 debacle was occurring, Cobbin was doing what most assistant brand managers do - trying to understand the business and get his bearings around a very large Coca-Cola organization. He quickly realized that Coca-Cola was a strongly data-driven organization, and unless a strategy could be backed up, it wouldn't fly.

As he analyzed the data, Cobbin found something intriguing. First, even though Sprite was not growing at the national level, when he looked at zip codes, he found that the brand was growing in certain areas. Interestingly, Sprite was doing well in areas that had a high percentage of African American and Hispanic consumers. Cobbin's analysis led him to one conclusion. If young males were driving the soft drink category's growth and young males of color were the one group that was growing in the Sprite consumer franchise, Macaulay Caulkin, Home Alone 2, and HCMs weren't going to do it. A new primary consumer relationship was needed.

ROMANCING THE BRAND: HOW BRANDS CREATE STRONG, INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS WITH CONSUMERS
Author: Tim Halloran
Publisher: Wiley
Price: $27.99
ISBN: 9781118611289

Re-printed with permission. Copyright © 2014 by Tim Halloran. All rights reserved

Author speak

Different consumers are in different stages of their relationships with the brands: Tim Halloran

The biggest challenge for brands is to continue wooing consumers as the relationship matures, Tim Halloran tells Ankita Rai

What do you mean by ‘building intimate consumer relationships’?
The idea behind Romancing the Brand came over 10 years ago when I was a brand manager at Coca-Cola. Once I was sitting behind a two-way mirror observing a focus group. A woman picked up a can of Diet Coke and said, “ I drink five or six of these a day; it is always at my side... I sometimes think of it as  I would of a boyfriend.”€ It was then that I realised just how consumers can connect with the brands. I then discovered that an academic at Boston University, Susan Fournier, had done research to understand consumer-brand relationships. They range from being strictly utilitarian to devotional. The goal of an effective marketer should be to get your consumers to fall in love with your brand.  After all, in a romance, both parties are dependent upon one another.

What are some common mistakes companies make when it comes to building relationships with consumers?
One size does not fit all. Different consumers are in different stages of their relationships with the brand. First, you have to know your type — understand the consumers who are most attracted to your brand. Second, if you are in a stage where you are just getting to know each other, you need to manage the consumer’s initial experiences with the brand. As the relationship matures, you’ll want to work on keeping the spark alive.

I think the biggest challenge for brands is how to woo consumers as the relationships mature. Awareness driving initiatives only announce to a consumer why they should be interested in a brand.

Tim Halloran
President, Brand Illumination