1.5 Marketing through the Eyes of Brand Champions

Know the Reasons Why Your Brand Champions Love You

An easy rule-of-thumb for putting together the marketing mix is to market products through the eyes of brand champions. Consumers that are unaware of a company's products or consumers on the fence considering a purchase are most persuaded by seeing the reasons why other consumers, like them, love the company's products. One thing we have noticed from working with advertising agencies is that none of them try to sell to a statistic; advertising agencies build messages around their understanding of real people. So, if you know your customers are 52% female, are on average 34.8 years old, have about 1.8 children living at home, spend $105.43 on the product category each year, are predominantly Caucasian, have an average household income of $48,242, and tend to vote Republican, you don’t know enough to build an effective marketing campaign. We need to put a name and face to our brand champions. We need to know the reasons they love us. Then, we can build a marketing campaign that shows the world why people repeatedly buy our products.

Coca-Cola Friendship Machine--Showing Off the Product through the Eyes of Brand Champions

Building on this idea of brand champions, Coca-Cola ran a promotional campaign to highlight the brand champion experience of bringing people together in a fun and joyful way. Coca-Cola vending machines were placed into theater lobbies in seven different countries--but not ordinary vending machines. These vending machines offered two bottles of Coca-Cola for the price of one. The catch was that the vending machines were twice their normal height and people had to work together to put in the coins and operate the machine. On “Friend’s Day,” friends got together to vend Coca-Cola from the Friendship Machine. Eight hundred bottles (per vending machine) of Coca-Cola were vended in nine hours, which is 1,075% more vended than on a regular machine. There were thousands of comments on blogs and social networks around the world, including video clips. However, the best result was showing the product through the eyes of brand champions in an engaging, compelling, and memorable way. Marketing through the eyes of brand champions doesn’t answer every question about the marketing mix, but does give insight into many decisions regarding product development, advertising, sales promotion, public relations events, points of distribution, and merchandising.

Riding a Wave vs. Filling a Gap

Marketing through the eyes of brand champions provides some guidance for growing a business. Traditionally, marketers have looked to fill gaps in the marketplace when developing products and services. If one believes the statistics, this is a high-risk approach. Less than one out of ten new products succeeds in today’s increasingly competitive marketplace.

We recommend riding a wave as an alternative to filling a gap. Riding a wave means looking for a complementary product or service to introduce, which rides a wave of interest for another product or service. Brand champions will be interested in enhancing their consumption experience by using complementary products.

Jibbitz Riding the Wave of Crocs

Crocs are foam clogs made in a variety of styles and colors, and millions have sold since their introduction in 2002. One of their brand champions, Sheri Schmelzer, looked for a way to make the Crocs worn by her family more personalized. So, Schmelzer started making decorative buttons to fit in the holes of the Crocs. The product, Jibbitz, sold by the thousands and was later acquired by Crocs for a $10-million upfront payment with an additional $10-million bonus for meeting earnings projections. By learning to see products through the eyes of brand champions, marketing managers will identify dozens of ways to ride waves of brand champion interest.