By Melissa Connerton
Within the competitive, challenging food category, the products that make up General Mills’ portfolio are truly household names – Cheerios, YoPlait, Haagen-Daas, Betty Crocker and many more. CMO Mark Addicks began by sharing his formula for growing brands, noting that “the magic isn’t the formula but how you practice it.” A successful formula requires understanding three key areas: developing strong leadership; utilizing marketing scale; and creating and leveraging a community.
At the center of these, according to Addicks, is a thoughtful, thorough understanding of the “brand champion” – who are you trying to reach? What are the wants and needs of the brand champion? What drives the brand champion to act? Once these questions are asked, insights can be developed, and that’s where real ideas come from.
Addicks believes that “your brand champion will tell you where the brand can go and can help you make it aspirational. Don’t just look at their behavior – use this behavior to look forward.”
He shared several examples of some of General Mills’ brand champions, from the ten-year-old boy who loves Lucky Charms to the YoPlait-eating woman balancing her roles of business person, wife and mother. Addicks cautioned that only after the brand champion is determined should the design and method for reaching the consumer be planned, whether it’s through sampling and coupons or YouTube.
According to Addicks, it’s no longer just about reach and efficiency but how many people the company needs to convert. Start by asking how many households you need to buy into your product to make it successful. Once that’s determined, scale efforts to that objective to meet your goal. As an example, he talked about the aspirational “Where is your Nature Valley?” campaign for their Nature Valley trail mix bars, which encouraged consumers to think about their own special place – their “nature valley.” The campaign was brought to life through several channels, including print, online and finally TV spots.
For a large company like General Mills, it’s also important to get to a scale that all brands can share. They do this by thinking about the four “c’s”: Causes, Communities, Catalysts and Capabilities. Of these, causes are particularly strong for General Mills, through Box Tops for Education and the YoPlait breast cancer awareness program. Another key area is community; Addicks recommends that companies “open up your brand and let other people participate in it. It’s no longer possible to just learn by doing; you need to engage other voices and focus externally as well as internally.”
He said, “brand championship is less about going out to individuals and getting them to believe; it’s more asking individuals to tell us what role the brand can play in their lives. We need to open up brands for consumers to tell us about them. If you know your brand champion, then you have a place to go and someone who can help develop the brand for you.”
Another way to better understand the brand champion is by studying the other brands they love outside your category.
Addicks also stressed the need to pay attention to both benchmarking and “a-ha” moments, one of which arose when the company acquired Pillsbury and had to identify best practices for both the existing company and the new brand. Ultimately, they found success by “filling in the gaps between the two.”
When asked about multicultural marketing, Addicks replied that “if you’re a great marketer, you should be marketing to everybody.”
In closing, he encouraged marketers to keep going back to the brand champion and to use this brand architecture as a starting point. “If you don’t have the brand champion right, you can do new media and traditional media ad nauseum…but you must know where you started from,” he cautioned.
In this indifferent world, where people become more and more estranged, it's really nice feeling to be that someone you miss and worry about!
Posted by: Coach Factory Store | February 23, 2011 at 08:01 PM
In this indifferent world, where people become more and more estranged, it's really nice feeling to be that someone you miss and worry about!
Posted by: Coach Factory Store | February 23, 2011 at 07:57 PM