Insight
The key to reviving a brand
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u RECAPTURE ‘TRUE NORTH’ – Successful foodservice brands start their lives with a focused position that either exploits or shapes consumer demand. Often it is the case that – far from needing dramatic repositioning – brands that have drifted off course from their original “heroic mission“ need to be put “back on point“. It is not that the original purpose of the brand has ceased to have any consumer franchise – the brand has, for a number of reasons, mislaid or forgotten what its “true north“ was! Ad hoc, opportunistic behaviour has diluted the brand proposition, confusing both brand members and customers. What the brand reviver must do is return the brand back to its “founding vision“ of what it stood for and sought to achieve. This is not to say that the brand reviver takes the brand “back in time“, remodelling the brand in the image of its original stores. No, what the brand reviver must do is take the brand back to first principles; getting everyone in the organisation to understand its founding vision and spirit. From this vantage point the organisation can successfully start to address how it improves both its marketing mix and distinctive employee/customer benefits.
What happens when a brand has lost its way? Chris Edger and Tony Hughes look at the elements needed to refresh or revive a brand
he brand reviver must refresh a brand proposition that has a diminishing customer base. Remaining customers will be delighted that the brand has tightened up its operational execution but do they truly need or love this brand? How does it benefit them in comparison to other foodservice options? In truth, the brand reviver can re-instil a sense of operational dynamism and optimistic momentum in the enterprise through his/her energy and passion but their efforts will founder unless they restore the brand’s distinctiveness. They must turn their attention to ensuring that their brand has a compelling culinary proposition with distinctive functional and emotional benefits that satisfy employee and customer needs, feelings and aspirations (resulting in attraction, loyalty and advocacy). Of course – unlike the brand originator – they are not starting from scratch. They have inherited a brand that had a differentiated position in the market place with a vibrant personality and strong reputation. This has waned in the face of a fierce competitive onslaught and/or changing consumer behaviours. So what do they do now? The brand reviver needs to go back to first principles with the brand, testing its salience and relevance, before instituting changes that – without compromising the brand’s central essence – propels back into category leading status. But what actions must the brand reviver take to achieve this objective?
Refresh Qualifiers Commentators who study, observe and write about company turnarounds are usually pretty prescriptive about what “turnaround” leaders should do when reviving a moribund organisation. They generally advocate a sequential process of transformation involving; analyse (conduct a management review using activity based costing, SWOT analysis and root failure causes analysis), plan (create a restructure and long-term strategic plan), do (seamlessly implement) and review (make incremental changes as necessary). They also point to the fact that there are various stages in turnarounds (acute needs, evaluation/assessment, restructuring, stabilisation, revitalisation and retrenchment) during which turnaround managers can deploy various strategies (selective shrinking, repositioning, replacement and/or renewal). Our view is that – whilst these perspectives are extremely instructive and useful – there are four things that revivers must do in order to refresh a brand’s proposition: u RESEARCH TRENDS AND RELEVANCE – the first thing that brand revivers should do is conduct exhaustive quantitative and qualitative analysis into macro and micro culinary trends. Whilst doing so they should ask the following questions with regards to both “imitating” and “shaping“; what are the “happening“ brands in our segment doing that we’re not? What can we imitate or “bastardise“ immediately without compromising the integrity of our positioning? How can we shape the segment going forwards? How do we leverage developing consumer preferences and tastes to our own advantage? How can we restore our reputation for category leadership and innovation?
“Often it is the case that – far from needing dramatic repositioning – brands that have drifted off course from their original ‘heroic mission’ need to be put ‘back on point’” u REINVIGORATE ‘BENEFITS’ – Having looked at nascent trends and re-established what the enterprise stands for the brand reviver now “cheerleads“ functional and emotional enhancements to the brand. Suffice to say, certain employee and customer needs, feelings and aspirations have changed since the brand was founded. Bearing in mind the extant market insight, the brand reviver must address the following questions; what enhancements to the brand can we (quickly) make now that will be of high perceived value to employees and customers (but low cost to us!)? Is the brand’s value proposition (ie price, product quality, service and environment) imbalanced, if so what elements need fixing now? What changes can we make that – in accordance with the core purpose of this brand - will make our employees and customers love us again?! What changes can we make to the marketing mix that will make us stand out from the crowd once again? u REVIEW AND ROLLOUT – Inevitably, brand revivers cannot take a scattergun approach to changing consumer facing elements of the brand. Changes need to be rigorously piloted, trialled and measured in “control“ environments prior to roll-out. That is not to say that this process should be conducted in a slow, formulaic manner. We strongly urge brand revivers to throw caution to the wind and “go big“ remodelling the marketing mix of a few key sites, albeit with slight iterations in each location. This will enable them to clarify what works – checking validity and replicability with employees and customers through the open-ended “start, stop, continue“ question.
Professor Chris Edger teaches multi-site management at Birmingham City University. This article is extracted from a forthcoming book on brands’ life cycles he is co-authoring with Tony Hughes, the former managing director of restaurants at Mitchells & Butlers and currently a non-executive director at The Restaurant Group www.propelinfonews.com ¡ WINTER 2015 ¡ PROPEL QUARTERLY
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