Sunday, October 4, 2009

Maximizing Profits through Shopper Insights in Convenience

This is the presentation I recently gave to the Canadian Snack Food Association - with a the juicy bits cut out.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Stretching “Experiential” Brands




I’m baaaack.

Have been a tad busy wrestling with Convenience Shopper Canada which is now the definitive study of convenience shopping in Canada.

In the meantime, Starbucks launched instant coffee. Does anyone know why? I am not sure.

But whatever the reason I guess they thought that their brand was strong enough and could certainly stretch into that category. Despite their recent troubles there is no doubt Starbucks is a strong brand in terms of consumer equity. And you would think it would be no problem to stretch it into so relevant a category.

But I think they face a challenge.

The reason is that the Starbucks brand is firmly rooted in the in store experience. Fine. That has been their strategy. But that position limits their ability to stretch it in the way that a packaged goods brand or even another retail brand can stretch. If they were they would need to leverage the positive associations with the in store experience as these are the strengths of the brand. The instant product does nothing of the sort as far as I can see.

It made me wonder whether as brands become more rooted in their design or experience and move to a "post brand image” world they become more limited.