Here are some different examples of how and why products are repositioned. They are worth knowing for your marketing course because, as we discuss elsewhere, repositioning is only one option. A firm could also withdraw the product, or launch the same product under a new brand.
As you read each case, ask yourself three simple questions. What went wrong with the old position? Why did the firm keep the brand instead of starting again? And which parts of the marketing mix changed to tell the new story?
Dare Iced Coffee
We will start with a short video case study. Watch how the brand moved away from its old image and who it was talking to after the change.
Mother Energy Drink (Coca-Cola)
Our next example is Mother Energy Drink, which the Coca-Cola Company launched into the Australian market in 2006.
Coca-Cola used a heavy launch program to get people to try the product. It ran a series of TV commercials with a look and feel similar to the Madagascar movie, which was popular at the time. It used its huge distribution network to get the product into many retailers, with prominent point-of-sale displays. The can had a tattoo look about it, again tapping into the popular culture of the time.
The launch campaign was well executed. The problem was the drink itself. The taste was not great, so repeat purchases were quite low.
Coca-Cola is a major beverage firm, and a poorly performing product simply does not suit it. So it had to decide whether to improve and reposition the product, or to withdraw it and replace it with a new brand. The firm decided to reposition the product. Why? Because the launch had worked so well that brand awareness (a key part of brand equity) was very high. Throwing that away would have been expensive.
The biggest challenge in the relaunch was to convince consumers to try the product again. So Coca-Cola changed the packaging, increased the size of the can and, of course, improved the taste.
It also tackled the poor-taste problem head-on. The new can said, in quite prominent letters, “New Mother, tastes nothing like the old one”. The relaunch TV commercials (see below) used a humor appeal, showing commandos breaking into the lab to hunt down the scientists who invented the original formula.
As a result, Coca-Cola was able to reposition the product as having a great taste, and many consumers were willing to give it a second try.
Napisan
Napisan is a laundry product that was designed to wash baby diapers (called nappies in Australia, hence the name). Napisan was very popular until around the 1980s, when consumer lifestyles changed. As households became more time poor, with both parents working, there was a big shift from washable cloth diapers to disposable ones.
Sales of Napisan fell in line with that drop in demand. This is a good example of repositioning being needed because of a change in the macro environment, not because of a fault in the product.
The firm still had a good quality product, so it had to decide whether to reposition it or bring out the same product under a new brand name. It chose to reposition, because Napisan had good brand equity: high awareness, and consumers trusted it.
Over the years Napisan has been successfully repositioned for a new use, as the go-to laundry product for tough stains. Notice that the product barely changed. What changed was the job we are asked to hire it for.
Repositioning a Credit Union
This example shows how a credit union was repositioned because it did not have a clear positioning space. As shown in the perceptual map below, the credit union was competing in a local market with a local bank that was much bigger than itself. Both were perceived as local and conservative, but the larger institution was winning more market share.
As you can see, there was a clear gap in the bottom right-hand quadrant, and the credit union decided to move into that space. This let it keep the “local” part of its positioning, but it had to shift from being conservative to being more innovative.
As part of the repositioning, the credit union introduced a range of new products, set up a customer relationship management (CRM) program, changed its sales and customer service staffing structure, and changed its tagline to “leading the way”.
These marketing mix changes clearly communicated the new positioning, and the credit union grew strongly over the following three years. Would a new tagline on its own have done the job? Almost certainly not. The new products and service changes gave customers a reason to believe it.
Old Spice
For a long time Old Spice was seen as the brand your dad (or granddad) used. In February 2010, Procter & Gamble and its agency Wieden+Kennedy launched the “Smell Like a Man, Man” campaign for Old Spice Body Wash, built around the over-the-top “Old Spice Guy”. Later that year the brand added a run of quick personal video replies to people on social media.
The product stayed much the same. The repositioning came through tone and audience: humorous, confident and aimed at younger men, while also talking to the women who often buy body wash for the men in their lives. Adweek reported Nielsen figures showing body wash sales up 55% over three months and 107% in the most recent month. Be careful with those numbers, though. A buy-one-get-one-free coupon was running at around the same time, so not all of that lift can be credited to the ads.
Domino’s Pizza
By the late 2000s Domino’s had a reputation for poor-tasting pizza. Rather than hide from it, the company changed its recipe (crust, sauce and cheese) and launched the “Pizza Turnaround” campaign, in which it openly admitted what customers disliked about the old pizza.
This is the same move we saw with Mother: fix the product, then face the old perception directly. Domino’s reported that its US same-store sales grew 14.3% in the first quarter of 2010, which it put down to more store traffic from the new pizza.
What these examples have in common
Look back across the cases. In each one the brand already had something worth keeping, usually awareness or trust, and that is why the firm repositioned rather than starting again with a new brand. And in each successful case, more than the advertising changed. The product, the packaging, the service or the target use moved too.
So when you analyze a repositioning case of your own, ask what equity the brand had, what changed in the mix, and whether the new position was a space customers actually wanted. For the risks involved, see our post on the challenges of repositioning.
Sources
- Adweek, “Old Spice Campaign Smells Like a Sales Success, Too” (2010).
- Stratrix, “Old Spice’s Viral Hit Sold 180 Videos. Whether It Sold Body Wash Is Another Question.” (on the concurrent coupon promotion).
- Domino’s Pizza, “Domino’s Pizza Announces First Quarter 2010 Financial Results” (May 4, 2010).
- USA Today, “New pizza recipe did wonders for Domino’s sales” (May 5, 2010).
