From Simple Claim to Customer and Brand Partnership
Marketer: weight management food manufacturer
Marketing challenge: growth through positioning evolution
Scope of work: multiple waves of positioning research to validate/optimize new positioning
Outcome: decade-long growth and emotional connection until the consumer said ‘you’ve gone too far’ bringing about a reshaped creative strategy and long-term user and brand partnership
The story:
I’ve had the real pleasure of working with several food manufacturers over the years including one brand that has grown from rather simple beginnings into a global icon. In this instance, my role was to provide market research and advice covering evolving positioning platforms over several years for a weight management brand.
Short-term Explicit
The initial consumer premise was simple: consume the product as directed for an outlined, short time period and you would lose weight, including a target in pounds.
From a positioning perspective, the benefit was pretty clear and easy to communicate. The idea was received well in concept test research, more so with women than men, and a ‘go’ recommendation as risk free as any I’d seen.
The campaign was launched and a success.
Short-term Personal
The campaign evolved with an adjustment to consumer benefit. Rather than concentrate on losing pounds, as compelling as it was, what if the benefit introduced situational relevance: fit those jeans, get ready for that special occasion or look your summer best.
Moving to real life goals from pounds clearly accelerated the brand promise and even more customer success with re-launch.
As good as the life goals premise was, it was still all over in a diet driven, short-term time period. Could the brand evolve from weight loss to weight management; into part of all days not just days leading up to something?
Long-term Empowerment
From here, the team thought, “so, if the brand can be a long-term promise, what about the next campaign evolution, that of enabler, to empower users to new heights?”
Nope. Exposure to these concepts in research met resistance with respondent sentiments like, “no product can empower me, only I can do that.”
And so that campaign iteration was not launched and brand aspirations scaled back to being a partner in weight management and so life in general. And that brand remains a partner to millions of women and men around the world.