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[voiceofsipei]

I’m Listening to Music from Burberry?!

One interesting finding when I glanced through the advertisement of Burberry is that they have been continuously published “Burberry Acoustic” and “Burberry Festive Film” featuring a variety of singers and celebrities delivering the brand values by vocal and performance. OMG, I LOVE EVERY SINGLE SONG!! This is not a traditional way of marketing advertisement but a smart way because as a luxury brand, the advertisement is not forcing the audience to remember anything, but to feel and appreciate the brand from every aspect.

If I never read the case, I won’t even know Burberry had this terrible time period losing the control over the brand image. That is to say, Burberry has successfully re-established the luxury lifestyle brand with a consistent effort in the past 20 years. Although I didn’t find the earliest advertisement of Burberry turning the brand association in 1998-1999, I found this advertisement in fabulous texture published in 2014, a great continuity on the brand setting – Luxury, heritage, English, warm, modern, authenticity, durability.

Back to the theoretical part, Burberry did a great job in position itself in the gap of fashion industry between three dimensions: price low-price high, classic-modern and low-end-luxury. And what incredible is that, when you look at Burberry now, it is still in the position planned 20+ years ago – above Ralph Laureen, Coach but below Gucci and Armani. Beside position, Burberry was also crystal clear about its differentiator and stands them out – functionality and heritage.

While the challenges for Burberry is also obvious, how to combine heritage and modern? How to take care of customers from 25+ all the way to 60+? Will the two target groups cannibalize each other? I believe the answer is yes. Although Burberry uses different brand labels, the customers believe there is only one Burberry. When you use low-price label to attract more audience, the brand cachet will diminish. The example of two sides are Hermes and Armani Exchange. In the past years, Burberry has tried harder to renew the brand image targeting younger generation. The new “TB” logo gradually becomes the second signature pattern of Burberry after the classic check. It also started to have recognition on the competitive women handbag market. I believe this is new attempt of Burberry transforming to the younger generation but not by cutting price.

[voiceofsipei]

Use Rogers’ Five Factors to Predict Diffusion

It has been fun reading the Rogers’ Five Factors framework because I have known the categorizations of innovation adopters for a while, but I don’t know how to analyze why there are certain products hits the market while others don’t. Another fun fact is when reading through the introduction of the four products I have been thinking through which product would performance better on diffusion and why, and some of the points I ever thought was in the Roger’s Five Factors. I would love to use the Rogers’ Five Factors framework to analyze the diffusion of four products and the New Coke as a case study.

I used an equal five score weight to rate each factor, and to sum up and see the total score as the prediction of diffusion.

Clearly the winner is peanut butter slice here and the losers are Stave Jigsaw puzzle and New Coke. The reflections of the analysis are first, as the HBS article mentioned, the products that’s more disruptive and innovated is hard to estimate because there is no direct competitor/replacement to compare. And this is also true for things whose price is not well defined, such as the Stave Jigsaw puzzle that has a high price due to the handcraft and scarcity. Second reflection is even though some products does not have a relatively high score, such as the Stave puzzle. It will diffuse well in a niche market to a certain group instead of the masses. The puzzle has a clear segmentation which is people who have everything and are hard to be entertained. Therefore, the scarce, high-price, handcrafted, delicate puzzle are well targeted to this group and a good business to run.

[voiceofsipei]

Singapore Airline: I Can Do Better even on a Safety Video!

First of all, I would like to invite you to watch the safety video from Singapore Airline since 2019 which I enjoy so much despite how many times I have watched. The safely video, a norm or even a neglectable piece on flight experience, Singapore Airline can do it differently as a marketing tool. They use all the elements of their branding – the Singapore girl, the premium experience, the fabulous service.

As a frequent flyer of Singapore Airline, I can share some of my personal experience as a customer. Well, unfortunately I’m not a first-class passenger, but you can take my experience as a decimal of them. The first thing I heard about Singapore Airline before my first flight with them in 2010 was they offer Haagen-Dazs ice cream and Wines for Economy class. But the much higher ticket price from Singapore airline does stop me for a long time (apparently, I’m not their target customer). While when I used to fly Singapore airlines for my business trips every two weeks, their service has been a default flight experience to me. I expect a cabin crew to bow down or even knees down when they talk to me; I expect the plane would have an entertainment system with at least 100 movies including the latest ones; I expect there will be all type of plugs to charge my electronics devices. As a result, I encounter very awkward moments when taking flights from other airlines - I watched how to cook pasta for 1 hour from a 10-inch TV 2 meter away because I assumed there should be an in-flight entertainment system on every seat. Lesson learnt, I started to fly with Singapore Airlines by default even for my person trip. As an extremely rational consumer, Singapore Airline took me down.

Singapore Airline has been doing a great job in three aspects on their strategy. First, they are crystally clear about their target customer – the premium customers. Although this is a small group of passengers, they contributed the majority of the revenues. (In the case, the first-class passengers generated roughly half of the revenue) While at the same time, they are the most difficult to be satisfied. Second, using the service excellence to differentiate themselves. As mentioned in the case, Singapore Airline redefined the airline industry from a transportation corporation to a service corporation. I have to say it’s a smart move. Not only because this is what the target customer needs, but also what they are capable to offer. Many of the major airlines in the world have their geographic or political advantages which are not accessible to this tiny country located in Southeast Asia. But they can compete on service and they invest heavily on service.  Last but not least, Singapore airline has established a strong brand image among travelers for years and they are consistent on delivering it. Even though there are imitators who emphasized on the customer experience later on, they are not able to have a unique and strong brand in the short time. The video I showed in front demonstrates their brand consistency from 1980 till now.

[voiceofsipei]

Does the Government Need a Chief Marketing Officer for Covid-19 Vaccine Adoption?

When looking at how nudging has been used in marketing to change people’s behaviors. The first thing flied into my mind is how governments are persuading people to get vaccine. How did they nudge our decision-making process? Not to my surprise, TIME explicitly stated that the vaccine adoption is a marketing issue, and the U.S. government is doing a worse job compared to Coca-Cola.

“We are able to sell smartphones, sodas and cars at high prices to almost every American. But we are struggling to give life-saving shots away for free to the same people. That’s a marketing failure that must be corrected.”

It has been so interesting looking at how different governments are taking creative initiatives on this. The US government has been using the vaccine lottery, paying people to give consumer incentives. This is also used by other governments, including China. Maybe not cash but CVS voucher, or even eggs. However, this seems unfair to the early adopters who should be congratulated and validated. One common nudge is sending reminder messages to the population, designed to amplify individuals’ desire to get vaccinated and a traditional information-provision intervention aimed at correcting the misconceptions that drive vaccine hesitancy. Other nudges such us removing all the friction of getting a vaccine shot. Instead of people stopping by clinics, German government send the doctors to people home knocking their doors give a shot and sending the “vaccine trucks” near the residential area asking anyone nearby if they have taken a shot. They tried to change people’s mind in the default option is getting a vaccine rather than not having one.

Source: TIME, Nature

[voiceofsipei]

Find Your Beach: Corona Beer

It has been around 40 years since Corona beers entered the U.S. market and followed by other international markets. It is no doubt that Corona leads its way of success as a premium beer on the brand awareness, not only because of the virus. I bet you all know you need a slice of lemon when drinking Corona. In this blog, I would like to share a finding with numbers - how’s the advertisement expense turnover for Corona. Do imagine the Fun, Sun, and Beach!

Corona beer is originated from Mexico, a country ranked No.7 in the world in terms of beer consumption volume. It is not a bad ranking, but the total consumption number is only one fifth of the U.S market and 3% of total international market. Any successful beer company should be ambitious towards the global market. In the U.S. market, Corona has a CAGR of more than 16% starting from 1985 to 1996 in shipments. From 1995 to 1996, this number soared to 40%. How’s the performance of the local brands and the major competitor Heineken? For the same time period (1985 to 1996), the best local performer Bud Light has an CAGR of 13% and Heineken has a CAGR of 0.3%. We can say with confidence that Corona had done a great job in sales growth.

Now the question becomes should we credit this good sale performance to the marketing department? We all read that beer is all about marketing - you can barely tell any difference between them with a blind test. I would vote for Corona being successful in marketing because for the same taste. People hold the perspective that Corona is more premium than Miller. It seems the Sun and Beach works! People cares about the fun mood when they are drinking instead of the quality emphasized by Heineken. Corona knows the customers with perfect positioning and definitely creates the cachet for a bottle of beer. As a customer, you are not drinking a beer, you are relaxing on a beach.

And do they burn more money to achieve this? No! The average Ads expenditure per shipment in the U.S. market is always the lowest among any local and international main competitors between 1985 to 1996 – only 1/3 of Heineken. This is incredibly efficient in advertisement turnover. (More figures can be found in the table below)

To summarize, Corona beers has a healthy growth in sales and effective in advertisement in the U.S. market. Given a stable market, I would expect they enjoy this lead in a long term. Cheers with the Sun and Beach!