Unless you have been living under a rock, I am sure
you know what the word “Pivoting” means today. When your current business
model isn’t working, your team pivots to plan B. These are definitely deep
breath moments but not necessarily desperate moments. Pivoting is a tool to unlock
additional growth avenues from your product or brand. Businesses can grow
beyond their initial dreams by re-imagining their biggest asset – their brand.
Businesses can pivot by pivoting their brands.
Learning about how many successful brands pivoted themselves from positions of near oblivion in the past can blaze the path for a lot of businesses today on how to pivot. A lot of this is good old fashioned marketing and hence to balance things out here is a nice Dilbert trashing marketing.
WHEN TO BITE THE BRAND PIVOT APPLE
1.
The
brand/product has lost its Mojo. It is perceived as “old” or
“tired.” Eg. Hotmail or Yahoo. An Indian example here could be “Action” Shoes
from our school days. Think of the pictures you conjure in your mind you hear
of these brands today.
2.
What
your brand owned has evolved from being a differentiating benefit to a cost-of-entry
benefit. Eg. Anti Dandruff Shampoos, Budget Airlines, smartphones etc.
3.
A
new competitor with a superior value proposition is entering your
industry. The best example here would a Jio to Everyone else in telecom sector
today !
5.
Technology has disrupted your industry and your
brand. Eg.Ipods to Walkmans, all smartphones to Ipods, digital camera (and maybe
even human brain !) etc now.
HOW
TO PIVOT YOUR BRAND: THE MAGNIFICENT 7
1.
Go Back to your Heritage
·
Taking time to study a bit of brand
archaeology can pay real dividends, the original brand purpose may still have
life in it yet. The specific products and services may change but the brand
purpose, why it exists, and brand philosophy, may have remained relevant and
true.
Example – Brand Lifebuoy.
· Launched in 1894, it is Unilever’s oldest brand
and the flag bearer of health for over 50 years in India.It started hemorrhaging as the
whole carbolic soaps category began to die in early and mid 2000s under the
onslaught of multiple beauty soaps.
·
The team went back to its roots to
see how it could move this brand from just being a cheap soap to being THE
health soap that it been launched as more than 100 years ago.
·
One staggering statistic that came
into picture the was the one of child deaths in all of Lifebuoy’s markets.
·
So the team figured out that a
simple act of washing hands with soap after 5 key occasions could actually help
bring this down dramatically and decided to pivot the brand on a brilliantly
articulated consumer insight of “small things can make a big difference”.
Lifebuoy
became the flag-bearer of the habit of handwashing with soap across all the
countries it was present in and re-connected with the consumers by going back
its own roots.
2.
Get a New Purpose
“Purpose” is
indeed the most bastardized word in the world of business today. However, it
can truly help when a brand needs to find a new direction, a new raison d'être
by challenging or indeed reversing the conventional logic. The market, the
competition or indeed the consumer may have moved on so that the original brand
strategy and business mission may need to be reviewed.
Example – Brand
Surf Excel – Dirt Is Good
·
All Detergents Remove Dirt. For
decades, communication in the detergent category had been a war vs stains/ dirt
and detergent was the cure.
·
Surf, like much of the category,
also spoke the language of 'washes brightest, washes cleanest” and the torture
test in the category was “stain removal”.
·
The entire category had become too functional
where stains were truly the enemy and hence each brand only spoke about its
best stain-removal power.
·
The Surf Excel team decided to
reverse this logic. They gave the brand a new purpose much higher than just
dirt removal and came up with the iconic “Daag Acche Hain “ or “Dirt is Good”
campaign.
·
The “Dirt is Good” philosophy was
framed through the idea that if dirt could help children practice and learn
lifetime values, that mothers believed were important, then Dirt is Good.
In
one fine scoop, Surf Excel used what the Asian mothers deemed important – “
Deep-rooted Asian Values” and got them to see “Dirt“ as a positive aspect of
growing up.
3.
Try a New Wardrobe
Sometimes a brand may need freshening up,
this may include a redesign but more often it is a combination of the
proposition, and the look and feel of the brand.
Example
– Pay Pal
·
PayPal was an expert in online
payments since 1999. But by 2015 this specialization was limiting the future
growth of the business and was under attack by the new kids on the block like
Apple Pay etc
·
So PayPal decided to pivot their
business in a manner that would make it a cultural fit with the new generation
of “commoners” who were relatively new in the world of online payment.
·
They tried to understand the
failings of money and financial services for a large and diverse audience of this
bunch of 'under-served' people, in a variety of ways.
·
Their strategy was to engage these
“under-served commoners” with a resonant new brand positioning and to develop
products and services to better serve the needs and expectations of this group.
Enter “PayPal is the New Money”
campaign.
This
pivoting helped open a complete new segment of consumers who the competitors had
overlooked for PayPal. These “un-cool” people suddenly became “cool” by getting
onto PayPal.
4.
Re-ignite the passion
Sometimes teaming up with something or
someone else can help rejuvenate a brand. Often, despite the partnerships being
successful, over a long period of time, the smoldering embers need to be
stirred up to get the fire back!
Example
– LEGO - STARWARS
·
LEGO's deal with Star Wars was part
of its revival program. But almost all other competitors like Hasbro and Mattel
were actively pursuing deals with the likes of Disney and Pixar.
·
In the absence of any new Star Wars
movies/products, the LEGO STARWARS franchise was falling helplessly behind.
They had to reignite flagging brand loyalty for LEGO using the new STARWARS
Program by creating an epic and contagiously shareable campaign for adults and
kids alike.
·
The LEGO team partnered with
STARWARS to create the “Yoda Chronicles” movie for cartoon network and managed
to harness this event to put this partnership back on track.
The
LEGO business pivoting using their old partner led to the creation of a new
LEGO movies franchise in the next few years and also spawned multiple new
ranges under this partnership.
5.
Find a new string to your bow
This is all about finding a new way of
appealing to your TG to create a buzz around you.
Example: Old Spice Bodywash
·
Old Spice was like a Jurassic era
brand that used to sell to your grandfather.
·
In order to rebuild its business
aggressively, the challenge was to generate excitement with the younger
generation who currently did not want to seen dead next to an Old Spice product.
By doing this, Old Spice wanted to increase its stagnant share in the category.
·
"The Man Your Man Could Smell
Like" was created to appeal to both men and women and quickly became a
cultural phenomenon.
Old
Spice found an M-String to their bow that drove engagement through superb personalization.
A lot of business and brands
today try to use this seemingly easiest of the pivoting strategies and most of
them fail because they don’t manage to engage the consumers properly.
6.
Take charge of the agenda
Sometimes you need to find a way to
leapfrog the competition, by innovating and taking control of the agenda in
your category.
Example: Toyota Hybrid
·
In 2013/14 car manufacturers in
Europe had to start dramatically lowering their CO2 emissions in order to meet
new EU criteria.
·
Toyota was the creator of hybrids
but hybrids per se was a small category and had been positioned as future
facing technology for tree huggers. Really niche and Toyota had to find a new
positioning, that could jump over other hybrids and appeal to a mass audience.
·
Toyota decided to give up this “Save-the-world”
attitude that all Hybrid makers had been carrying on till then. They came up
with a simple new campaign that demonstrated how driving a Hybrid makes people
happier in traffic. It was a basic benefit driven campaign, and found real
relevance for people.
Toyota
put the reason for buying a car in the driving seat and everything else on the
back seat.
7.
Be Re-born
The most extreme version of brand pivoting
is brand resurrection. This is when a brand is brought back from the dead and
given a new lease of life.
Example: Amitabh Bachchan
·
Brand AB – The Past :
o
The
core value based on which this brand was created and became successful was
that of a "Saviour" - he was a saviour of the neglected masses;
making them fulfil their aspirations by fighting against a corrupt
society.
·
Fall
of the Brand AB
o
The
social outlook post liberalization in the early nineties had changed from that
of gloom to brightness; it had become an era of achievement and achievers.
It was an era of hope, life was more organized, India had started shining.
So now the image of Brand AB as a person fighting against a corrupt
society for social justice was out of context and it took a total nose dive.
·
The Resurrection
o
The
Brand AB was recycled with "Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC)". The show
presented the same Brand AB by re-positioning it. The core value of the
brand was still the same - previously he was the saviour of the neglected
masses; now he became the saviour of the real people, helping them to
achieve and win money.
There’s a common misconception that
pivoting is only for startups, and only for early startups at that. Its
important for all organizations to realize that pivoting is how you avoid
extinction, and how you keep your consumers happy. Consumers aren’t paying you
for a product or service — they’re paying you to solve a problem in a way
that generates value. As the market changes, so does that calculus. Pivot or
perish, choice is yours.
