We are proud to announce that we have made contributions to the marketing press twice last week:

Consultant Sally Moses comments in The Grocer’s article ‘Review for Pepsi Raw after sales deteriorate’ by Alex Beckett:

‘The brand had suffered from the outset with a “half-hearted approach” from PepsiCo, claimed Sally Moses, branding consultant at The Value Engineers. “You only have to look at Pepsi Raw’s Facebook page to see how it’s failing to resonate. Consumers don’t know where to buy it and don’t know what it is. The benefits of the raw cane sugar ingredient were not properly established. It’s a shame because many people enjoy the taste.”‘

Read the full article on The Grocer online. 

Alex Waters, Director of Capabilities, comments in Marketing in Kim Benjamin’s article ‘Kronenbourg looks to home’ which discusses that the brand aims to drive off-trade sales by playing on its premium credentials.

‘Alex Waters, director of brand consultancy The Value Engineers, shares this view. “The challenge is convincing the trade that Kronenbourg truly is a premium brand and that it should be priced accordingly”, he says. “This means exploring new behaviours, target consumers and products for Kronenbourg. It could target a demographic that is not well served by lagers currently, such as 35- to 45-year-olds, where it could play to its brand heritage of the Brasserie Kronenbourg and become the lager choice for those who know their beer or want to be seen to know it.”‘

Read the full article in Marketing online.

The first premium ‘functional’ bottled water for kids has launched in the US, hoping to offer a cool alternative to other soft drinks . With no sugar, colouring or calories, WAT-AAH! hopes its child-friendly branding and advertising will persuade children to move away from high-calorie, high-additive carbonates and juices.

The brand’s founder, Rose Cameron, claims: “The soda bubble is bust… Water is the true alternative to soda, but until now kids have found it boring and preachy. Not anymore. WAT-AAH!, 100% sugar free, ultra pure water, convinces kids that drinking water is far from boring! ”

WAT-AAH! launched earlier this month in New York with a grassroots viral and outdoor  campaign featuring the WAT-AAH! boy covering traditional fizzy drinks logos and ads with the brand’s posters. Meanwhile, a branded blog asks parents to ‘Take the Challenge’ and report whether their child went for a traditional soft drink or WAT-AAH!

While the product is always consistent, it’s packaged as four variants: Brain, Power, Body and Energy. It’s a clever approach, which plays on children’s love of variety and creates a sense of ‘amping up’ the relevant area. Stories are already being reported of children choosing ‘Body’ when heading to sports practice, or ‘Brain’ on school test days.

So the big question is: will it succeed? The brand is aiming for an irreverent, fun positioning with a note of naughtiness, which may strike a chord with younger kids.  It has the potential to prove popular with harassed parents desperate to wean their children off more mainstream soft drinks – but one wonders how many parents will be prepared to pay for something that’s always been available on tap (pun definitely intended).

Gut instinct says potential will be limited – after all, WAT-AAH’s media spend constitutes a drop in the bucket against market players such as PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, with their multi-million, star-studded campaigns. Having said that, its concept, advertising and most particularly its online strategy are clever, and could become playground currency.

As with all things kids, the magic formula is difficult if not impossible to predict. So we’ll be watching developments with interest…

Whilst out one weekend recently engaging in customary revelries I was approached with the offer of a free “vodka and Russchian”. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth and thinking it churlish to refuse such an offer, I naturally accepted. When I asked whom to thank for such generosity, I was pointed in the direction of a mysterious looking chap dressed in a trench coat and hat described only as “the Russian.” The vodka and Russchian turned out to be a rather tasty twist on the standard vodka and tonic, imitating a popular way of serving vodka in its spiritual home.

So, full of excitement at my recent discovery and keen to show it off (I’d kept the bottle), I began parading it around the office the next Monday morning only to be told how it had been around for years and they’d known about it for ages and even our HR director used to quaff the stuff back when she was too young to know any better. With the wind taken out of my sails, I started to wonder: why hadn’t I heard about this before? How had I missed this very distinctive product from a market leading minerals brand?
 
I had been so excited though when I thought that I had been a part of a launch and had found something new. So it got me thinking; relaunching an existing product will not only re-alert consumers to a brand they’d forgotten about but may convince those who haven’t seen it before that it is an entirely new one without any of the expense of new product development. Admittedly this was a fairly minor promotion, but the interest generated far exceeded the outlay of dressing a promotions man up as a Russian spy and giving out a few free drinks.

We’ve all talked about the benefits of innovating our way out of a recession during the recent times of doom and gloom but what about renovation? Generate renewed interest in your brand with only a fraction of the cost.