The author of The Breakaway Brand Fran Kelly and the COO of OceanSpray Ken Romanzi joined forces to share the case study of their brand transformation.
Fran starts out by reminding us that the CMO only gets about 18 months to prove their worth before they are out. This is why he wrote the book. It’s key to get your brand from good to great. He asked how many people in the room actually feel like they’ve been able to bring a brand to great. Only a few raised hands – yep, Becky Saeger, CMO for Charles Schwab among them. (Full disclosure- Becky is my boss.)
Fran says that breakaway branding can be done. The problem is that there are 10 things you have to get right not just one.Here are a few nuggets, the rest you’ll read about in the book:
- You have to be committed from the very beginning. Easier said than done. By definition you have to do things that have never been done before. People will not applaud you along the way since it’s new. That takes courage.
- Then you have to start with a good idea. Duh. But he emphasizes the importance of letting bad ideas go. Once you have the right idea you have to keep building on it and improving it.
- Finally you have to make sure that the products that come along reinforce the brand. He thinks JetBlue is a great example of courageous brand building in a tough market.
So on to the OceanSpray story with remarks from Ken:
He admits being humbled being compared to other great iconic brands. In his business, the cranberry growers are at the heart of everything.
The challenge:
Fix the domestic biz. It hadn’t grown in about ten years. Yikes! Although OceanSpray is number one in the juice category, they’re most well known to consumers for maintaining a healthy urinary tract. All women know to drink cranberry juice for bladder infections.
The juice category itself was also declining with all of the concerns about sugar. Purified water and sports drinks were becoming more popular.
The Insight – shows a photo of a cranberry bog in British Columbia during harvest. He realized what a beautiful site it was and how the image needed to be communicated more broadly. Coke and Pepsi products aren’t made from bogs so that’s where the differentiation comes in.
Their goal was to transform the biz not just do great advertising. This meant re-introducing cranberries to America. Cranberries are indigenous to North America. Remember Thanksgiving?
Their idea also needed to support a very broad product line.
So, their agency developed an Ocean Spray DNA statement: Our reason for being lies in a little warrior fruit called the cranberry. The heart of the brand was born in the bogs and lives there still.
Their idea was to feature cranberry growers standing waist deep in a bog. These folks are the experts and are passionate about their business. Although the actual growers wanted to be involved in the ads, turns out they aren’t very good speakers so they ended up using actors who looked exactly like a couple of their growers.
To test the concept they decided to build a pseudo cranberry bog in middle of NYC and bring the experience directly to consumers – really teach people where cranberries come from and how they’re harvested. Their goal was coverage on the Today show. Turns out Al Roker delivered just what they needed. He asked questions about the antioxidant attributes of cranberries and referenced the common perception of cranberries only coming in canned form. This event was so successful that they are rolling it out in more cities this year.
Next we get to view the new commercials – most focus on the nutritional benefits of cranberries and are modern, and a bit cute.
So far their campaign is a winner. The best ads they’ve ever run as a company with persuasion and awareness metrics going up. They increased their ad spending but are now looking at how volume is impacted. Their charts show volume going up even as the category is declining so the turnaround is proving out.
Their ROI now shows $1.57 return for ever dollar spent in advertising despite a category average of $.61.
These numbers are promising but they point out that they don’t aim to overtake the soft drink business to compete with Coke and Pepsi. They’d be happy if consumers take a “break” from their soda drinking on occasion to have a cranberry juice drink.
Fran closes the talk with a reminder to the audience that with great ideas like the Ocean Spray campaign, it’s key to integrate the message across all channels and stakeholders. Even the HR dept found a way to recruit candidates with their “straight from the bog” story.
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