Category Archives: cpg branding

March 3, 2023 · 8:03 am

The Distinction Between CPG Brand Management and Luxury Brand Management

Brand management is the process of creating, developing, and maintaining a brand in order to achieve business goals. It involves establishing a brand identity, building brand equity, and ensuring that the brand remains relevant and competitive in the market. However, brand management strategies can vary depending on the type of brand being managed. In this article, we will explore the differences between managing a consumer-packaged goods (CPG) brand and a luxury brand.

What is CPG brand management?

CPG brands are typically everyday products that consumers use on a regular basis, such as food, beverages, personal care products, and household items. CPG brand management is all about creating a brand that appeals to a broad range of consumers and maintaining that brand in a highly competitive market. CPG brand managers need to focus on product innovation, pricing, packaging, distribution, and marketing in order to succeed.

The focus of CPG brand management is on creating a consistent and reliable product that consumers can trust. CPG brands often have lower profit margins than luxury brands, which means that cost control is critical to their success. CPG brand managers need to carefully balance the cost of producing their products with the price they charge consumers in order to maximize profits. Additionally, CPG brands need to be marketed in a way that appeals to a broad audience and drives sales volume.

What is luxury brand management?

Luxury brands, on the other hand, are products or services that are associated with high levels of quality, exclusivity, and status. Luxury brand management is all about creating a brand that conveys a sense of prestige and luxury to consumers. Luxury brand managers need to focus on product design, craftsmanship, exclusivity, and marketing in order to succeed.

The focus of luxury brand management is on creating a sense of exclusivity and rarity that appeals to a select group of consumers. Luxury brands often have higher profit margins than CPG brands, which means that their pricing strategy can be more flexible. Luxury brand managers can charge premium prices for their products, and they often use scarcity and limited availability to create a sense of exclusivity.

Luxury brands are also marketed in a way that is different from CPG brands. Instead of appealing to a broad audience, luxury brands target a niche market of high-net-worth individuals who are willing to pay a premium for quality and exclusivity. Luxury brand managers often use celebrity endorsements, event sponsorships, and other high-end marketing techniques to build brand awareness and create a sense of exclusivity.

Key differences between CPG brand management and luxury brand management:

Target market: CPG brands target a broad audience, while luxury brands target a niche market of high-net-worth individuals.
Product features: CPG brands focus on creating a reliable and consistent product, while luxury brands focus on exclusivity and rarity.
Pricing strategy: CPG brands typically have lower profit margins and need to balance the cost of production with the price they charge consumers, while luxury brands can charge premium prices and use scarcity to create a sense of exclusivity.
Marketing strategy: CPG brands are marketed in a way that appeals to a broad audience, while luxury brands use high-end marketing techniques to build brand awareness and create a sense of exclusivity.

In conclusion

While both CPG brand management and luxury brand management involve creating and maintaining a brand, the strategies used to achieve these goals can be very different. CPG brands focus on creating a consistent and reliable product that appeals to a broad audience, while luxury brands focus on exclusivity and rarity to appeal to a select group of high-net-worth consumers. Understanding these key differences is essential for developing effective brand management strategies in either context.

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September 2, 2018 · 8:09 pm

How to Blemish Your Brand and Lose Market Share Due to Short-foresightedness: The Trouble with Major Food Brands

By James D. Roumeliotis

Yours truly, who took the audacious dive into the functional food and beverage business as a start-up and has presently taken it into the early stage phase, is having a field day reading about the challenges and frequent plethora of lawsuits brought about by consumers who have had enough of the deceit of the major food and beverage brands.

Once upon a time, during previous generations, renowned household brands such as Kraft, Kellogg’s, Pepsi Co. and General Mills, among many others, who once dominated the supermarket shelves along with loyalty. Today, through their complacency and/or (as public companies) continuous pressure for quarterly sales and profit results mount, as well as through their cunning practices, we notice a backlash from food shoppers – most notably the more health conscious and finicky Millennials.

What Gives in the New Normal?

Today, consumers are more health conscious. This justifies the constant and extensive growth and popularity of the organic, non-GMO, clean label, plant based, farm-to-table and gluten-free product offerings. A large percentage of food producers of products in those categories are the small and nimble new kids on the block. They have hit hard on the established brands who are scrambling to adjust to this new reality.

Despite their vast resources and capital at their disposal, as large ships, they are not able to swiftly make the necessary reformulations or to introduce a healthier fare. As a result, the pressure from the unceasing decline of their revenues and market share are leaving them with no choice but to react, rather than be proactive. Their path to least resistance is to acquire small health food and functional beverage brands in large numbers to compensate for their short-foresightedness.

The Permanent Health Craze

Hasty and reactive decisions, conniving strategy and foolish leadership have come back to bite them – serves them right. Use of inexpensive and toxic ingredients to engineer taste profiles and in some cases, make the products addictive, some of which include refined grains, MSG, artificial colors and flavors, high fructose corn syrup, Carrageenan and the other artificial and unfavorable which most of us have a difficult time pronouncing. Add to this GMO corn, soy and…well you get it. More expensive and healthier options can be used but their fiscal paranoia signifies to them this will hurt their bottom line. The big brands avoid raising prices to compensate for more expensive natural ingredients despite research showing that consumers are willing to pay more for healthier choices.

Lawsuits Galore

The cause of distrust among consumers can be rationalized due to corporations misleading the public as a whole, since most of those public food producers are, first and foremost, accountable to heir shareholders. Deliberate misleading information by food producers in regard to nutritional benefits is akin to the nickel-and-diming by airlines, hotels and banks. But unlike the latter list, when it pertains to food, it is considered more critical as our health is at stake.

As a result, in the last few years, there have been frequent class action lawsuits against food and beverage companies. Everything from Non-GMO claims and the use of a better-for-you sounding ingredient such as “evaporated cane juice” rather than using the simple term “sugar” (one and the same). Such negligence and deceptive practices have made the established food brands vulnerable.

According to a Forbes August 2017 article by John O’Brien, titled “Food Companies Beware: Class Action Attorneys Aren’t Slowing Down”, it describes that “Plaintiffs attorneys who target food and beverage companies with class action lawsuits are showing no signs of slowing down, according to analysis from international law firm Perkins Coie that also shows California’s lawyers are the most active.” Some of those lawsuits include consumers claiming they were misled into buying the product due to mislabeling.

Here is a small sample list of the shameful established food and beverage brands (click for the link to lawsuit article) with seemingly dysfunctional and old school strategies. They have become a favorite punch bag from the likes of this author along with numerous consumer groups and their hired attorneys.

Why Brand Image and Loyalty Matter

A “Brand” is a promise of something that will be delivered by a business. This promise comes in a form of quality, an experience and a certain expectation in the mind of the consumer. It includes the Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Marketing, on the other hand, is about spreading compelling messages to your target audience while branding is a combination of words and action. Marketing is extroverted and communicates quickly, while branding is introverted and a slow process if it’s to produce any real impact. Effective marketing activities are vital in developing a brand. When combined successfully, branding and marketing create and promote value, trust, loyalty and confidence in a company’s image, products and services.

According to an Edelman’s Trust Barometer, it was revealed that 77% of respondents refused to buy products from companies they distrusted. More disturbing is that 72% said they had criticized a distrusted company to a friend or colleague.

When customers are treated with honesty and delighted by a particular brand experience, they begin to bond emotionally with the brand. They become brand loyalists and advocates – buying the brand more often and recommending it to others. This behavior serves to build the brand’s reputation. This approach is priceless –even though it may take longer to take positive effect.

Customers first, employees second — investors/shareholders third

In the ivory towers of public corporations, the CEO and board of directors have been programmed to put their stakeholders best interests above all else. Their mission is to do what it reasonably takes to deliver quarterly results ─ in other words, to focus on the short term rather than sow the seeds and do what is most beneficial for the future direction of the company ─ despite any short-term pains. Savvy and considerate top management know better that customers and employees are the two key drivers of corporate success. The main principle is that if employees have a positive attitude, are passionate, well trained and competent, results will be reflected through positive customer experiences resulting in brand loyalty. Ultimately, the shareholders will reap the benefits through stock performance and generous dividend distributions.

Large well-established companies have several advantages over smaller ones mainly due to their imposing size, their brand recognition as well as for their plethora of cash and human capital. However, despite their deep pockets and plethora of resources, they are risk adverse, bureaucratic in their decision-making process and to some extent, disengaged from their customers. Moreover, if they are a public company, their initial allegiance is to their shareholders.

Start-ups and smaller businesses, on the other hand, have less money and resources at their disposal to grow or even compete in the unapologetic and competitive landscape. Yet, the small business is agile, nimble and creative and possess several advantages such as a clean slate, rather than the baggage many large corporations have been carrying over the years, as well as perceived as more trusting by consumers, further engaged with their customers, and a refreshing alternative to the established brands – provided the products offer unique and attractive characteristics.

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Filed under 1, brand equity, Branding, branding not products, Business, business management, consumer packaged goods marketing, cpg branding, customer engagement, customer experience, decision making management, discerning clients, discriminating clients, dysfunctional companies, executive decision making, Food business, Food entrepreneurship, food marketing, Food production business, inept management, leadership, poor leadership, preventing business problems, public relations

Tagged as brand image, brand reputation, executive leadership, food branding, Food business, poor leadership

July 3, 2018 · 11:13 pm

Small Brands vs Big Brands in the CPG Space: How to Cleverly Outdo the Complacent Mammoth

By James D. Roumeliotis

Sumo wrestler being pushed.

Using the CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) brands as the main topic for reference in this editorial, we dig into the dilemmas of the leading consumer brands such as Kellogg’s, Nestle and General Mills to name a few in the food sector.

Small, nimble and niche brands, most notably start-ups, are beginning to chip away at the market share of many leading consumer goods firms. As a result, these small companies are growing rapidly to the detriment of the big brands but to the benefit of the consumers. This has to do with big brand complacency, bullying and arrogance along with the desperate need for short-term results to satisfy the insatiable expectation their shareholders’ have for quick profit and stock price increases – but with little regard for today’s consumer. As such, it is no surprise that shoppers have become more savvy, see through much of the nonsense and have helped turn this tide whereby. Consumers trust and are more confident with the small brands over the traditional ones their parents were accustomed to.

Welcome to the new generation of CPG choices and mentality.

Big ship vs Fast Craft

Be First, Different & Daring

It takes methodical strategic maneuvers and innovation to outdo the established ones. The good news is that many small companies seem to be doing a good job at both. As a result, they are becoming quite appealing by both consumers and the large brands respectively. At some point and under certain criteria, the latter are keen to purchase the small niche companies.

A case in point is the state of the exploding snack bars health food category. According to Euromonitor International, a market research and analysis firm, renowned food companies such as Kellogg’s and General Mills are experiencing declining market share as compared to previous years. Meantime, privately held Clif Bar, gained a one percentage point during the same period, while another small competitor, Kind LLC, increased its share by 2.1 points. Not idly standing by, last year, Kellogg’s purchased seven-year-old RXBar for a whopping $600 Million, while Mondelez International, the food conglomerate, which owns the Oreo brand of cookies and Cadbury chocolate, purchased Enjoy Life, a consumer packaged goods upstart which performed three years of 40 percent consistent annual growth. A 2015 report from Fortune magazine found that in 2014, in a single year alone, major CPG brands lost $4 billion in market share.

Reputation seems to be the culprit for this significant market share loss. Consumers perceive products from large brands as unsustainable, as well as less healthy with inferior and artificial ingredients along with a high content of sugar and salt. Younger generations of consumers are also suspicious of major corporations. For example, a 2015 study, conducted by the research firm Mintel, indicates that 43 percent of millennials do not trust traditional food companies.

The single most important advice here is that newly established brands should focus on their unique strengths to win over their large and deep pocketed competition rather than trying to go head-to-head with them. Newcomers to the CPG market are in a better position than large brands in catering to emerging consumer trends such as “clean label”, “free from” and organic/non-GMO foods.

Agility

Being a small company give you the benefit of being nimble and efficient in areas large ship like companies are not able to do so. This makes them slower to respond. In fact, there are times that they don’t even return calls or email inquiries. Strat-ups can implement a business model which provides value to customers while simultaneously building a lean operation which will yield a consistent profit. This can be accomplished with a limited financial capacity.

USP with a Niche Focus

Unlike the big companies, smaller ones can develop products which meet an unmet need. A niche market can demand a premium price which can yield respect along with a handsome profit. For large companies to offer niche product may risk cannibalizing their own existing products.

Increasingly, mass-market retailers are seeking niche brands that their clients consider as healthier. This will keep their customers from purchasing products in this category elsewhere as these large mainstream food retailers face rising competition from natural food and specialty chains such as Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe’s.

Trust and Transparency

Regrettably, established food companies do not practice what they state over their PR megaphones. A recent Forbes article contends, those large brands mislead consumers by giving an impression of a healthy product through their misleading labels. Consumers today are well informed and can recognize inauthentic brands, but it seems that short-cuts and short-term thinking, in the name of profit margins and increasing share prices, take precedence. According to AdAge, consumers are increasingly switching to smaller CPG companies as they are perceived as healthier and more authentic.

Media Spend on a Budget: Creative vs. Outspending

With a limited marketing budget, the most effective methods of reaching your target audience and to out-create your large corporate competitors is through social media, including reaching out to influential bloggers with a large audience, coupled with a select number of sponsorships and the use exposure of marketing posters, brochures etc. for maximum exposure. The key to compelling content is to make it about your niche and your story. If you sell good quality products and have managed to build a good online network of brand supporters, you can leverage your goodwill to bring in sizeable sales.

In a Nutshell

As change is and should be constant, the small brands should not only learn from all the mistakes made by the big brands but also offer what the consumer demands…clean ingredients, transparency and personality along with a story and an emotional connection. These elements exude confidence and trust. Moreover, smaller companies should remain nimble, use plenty of experiential marketing and continuously offer timely improvements including environmental sustainability.

Established brands please take note as you are on notice.

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March 1, 2016 · 8:38 pm

Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) Marketing Tactics: Spending Less and Generating More Exposure & Revenues

by James D. Roumeliotis

When it comes to marketing food products, known in industry jargon as “Consumer Packaged Goods (using the acronym “CPG”), it takes more than mere advertising. Any brand with a deep advertising budget can do so. However, the skill is in knowing how to best utilize a limited budget for maximum effectiveness. Surprisingly, many smaller brands seem to be running circles around their much bigger brand counterparts with greater resources. The key differentiator is in the strategy and implementation including the ideal target market, brand positioning and specific media sought.

Guerrilla marketing: Getting noticed on a shoestring budget

Persuading consumers to consider your product on their shopping list takes time and an ample marketing budget. However, getting consumers to take notice of your product can be swift if a combination of Guerrilla/unconventional marketing tactics are used in conjunction with unique packaging design.

The term “Guerrilla marketing” refers to an unconventional and bold approach for a business to promote its products and/or services in ways that capture the attention of potential customers. They are creative, memorable, attract people’s attention (some may be controversial) and require a limited budget which makes it ideal for small to mid size businesses. “Guerrilla marketing” was originally coined in 1983 by Jay Conrad Levinson who also wrote the book “Guerrilla Advertising” with subsequent editions and derivatives which followed.

In keeping with the CPG theme, Nestle’s Kit Kat candy bar brand utilized Guerrilla marketing by placing creative candy-themed benches across large cities as the image below depicts.

Today, if a brand, especially a new arrival on the market, wants to stand-out in a crowded marketplace, it ought to consider the following means and tactics.

Online/digital ─ Content marketing: This is absolutely the medium/platform which should not be overlooked. Even large brands are placing more emphasis with digital in their integrated marketing strategy. Content is released frequently but in small doses utilizing Twitter, blogs, Linkedin etc. along with stunning lifestyle images and video with must view material (Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo to name the most prominent digital venues).

Public Relations: As this is earned media, what is stated about a brand from a third party is considered trustworthy. Creating buzz through the media, including the use of press releases, is an inexpensive way to earn publicity in lieu of traditional advertising spend.

Alliances – associations – sponsorships: These are additional considerations to boost exposure which turns-out to be a win-win for both parties (sponsor and sponsored party/ beneficiary).

Storytelling: A brand should include storytelling which places an emphasis on the brand’s heritage, the reason for being and why it is offering such a product or products. It is more than content and a narrative, it is a picture made up of feelings, facts and interpretations.

Food packaging: Eating with our eyes

The value added in design, craftsmanship, branding and overall quality can elevate a product into an epicurean delight. Clever and innovative design significantly increases sales and improves brand performance. In addition, it can do plenty of silent marketing. Consider Toblerone, the Swiss chocolate bar brand, whose distinctive yellow triangular packaging and equally shaped product inside is instantly recognizable. It undoubtedly portrays a premium product yet offers a good value for the price. The brand’s marketing spend is much less than its competitors, though its sales and profits are known to be exceptional in its category.

There are many ways of seeing the value of design. For instance, you can measure sales and relative value as an output of changes in design. Design can also improve your standing among rivals and give you a competitive advantage. The Design Council published a report where facts and statistics concerning the value of design are highlighted. One interesting statistic is that design conscious businesses can expect a return on their internal design investments as high as 125%. That’s quite an impressive return compared to other types of investments made in a business.

What may be obvious is that if you have high quality design, you do not need to compete with your competitors on price. If the design of a product packaging has a “wow” factor to make it stand-out on the shelf, then consumers will choose it even if the price is slightly above the competing products. If the product inside is as good as its packaging, customers will enjoy what you have to offer and continue to be loyal to your brand. That is the result of offering something unique and of a higher standard.

Lifestyle marketing: Non-traditional methods to reach modern consumers

Generally speaking, a brand that is designed for a lifestyle should have a much higher emotional value to consumers than one based solely on features, benefits and cost. A study from the Kellogg School of Management revealed that brands serve as a means of self-expression along with the limitations of expressing a consumer’s identity through brands. The goal of a lifestyle brand is to become a way that people can utilize it to relate to one another. Those brands are an attempt to sell an identity, or an image, rather than a product and what it actually does.

Two CPG brands which have joined the lifestyle bandwagon and spending more money and resources away from traditional marketing are Oreo and Red Bull. The former has created one article and image on the pulse of pop culture per day for 100 days with not much revealed of what would come next. Red Bull which spends a staggering 30% of its revenue in marketing and sponsorship events, has also launched a magazine with over five million subscribers, including a record label and two film studios to produce its lifestyle and experiential material.

Healthy eating and acquiring new tastes are modern day trends which can’t be ignored by CPG marketers. Smaller portions are also a recent trend which equate to less calories for consumption along with much focus on natural and non-GMO ingredients.

Creating new categories and uncontested market space

Instead of competing head-on in the same product category, as the majority of brands are accustomed to, consider creating an entirely new class which will be in an uncontested marketplace. This approach is known as Blue Ocean Strategy®. It was developed by two professors at INSEAD, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne who are also co-authors of Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant (Harvard Business Review Press). As they put it, they observed that companies tend to engage in head-to-head competition in search of sustained profitable growth. Yet in today’s overcrowded industries competing head-on results in nothing but a bloody “red ocean” (as in cutthroat competition turns the ocean bloody red) of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. Lasting success increasingly comes, not from battling competitors, but from creating “blue oceans” of untapped new market spaces ripe for growth.

An intriguing case study which puts the above strategy in perspective is Australia’s Casella Wines. In 2001, it entered the overcrowded and highly competitive wine industry in the U.S. with its Yellow Tail brand. By the end of 2005, it had reached sales with 25 million cases ─ achieved on a limited marketing budget. This triumph placed Yellow Tail in the category of the overall bestselling 750ml (25.4 U.S. fl. oz.) red wine, outstripping Californian, Italian and French wine brands. It accomplished this by applying the Blue Ocean strategy framework. Consequently, Casella Wines’ Yellow Tail brand targeted the beer and ready-to-drink cocktails in the U.S. market and created Yellow Tail to be easy drinking, an informal selection, fun and an adventure ─ in essence, an uncomplicated, fruity wine structure that was instantly appealing to the mass of alcohol drinkers.

A category which should not be ignored are Millennials (aka Generation Y). They are projected to spend $65 billion on consumer packaged goods (CPG) over the next decade, yet there are many misconceptions and challenges in reaching these shoppers, according to a white paper by WPP’s Geometry Global. Millennials are the largest generation since the Baby Boomers. They are known to be quite sophisticated, technology wise, unaffected by most traditional marketing and sales pitches. As a result, CPG companies should adjust and innovate to stay digitally connected with the Millennial consumer.

Sensorial branding: Exploiting the senses

In keeping with the spirit of the five senses, you can exploit them entirely to create a favorable experience in synergy, for guests and clients alike. Below are some of the most important factors:

SIGHT – choice of packaging, its design along with its images, the font type and colors. Add to that a stand-alone point of purchase (POP) display.

TOUCH – the feel and ergonomic design of the packaging. This is how the consumer interacts with it. Plenty of emphasis should be placed on this when designing the package.

TASTE – finding the perfect balance between sour, salty, sweet, and bitter. Food product samples ought to be available as consumers would prefer to try a product they are exposed to for the first time. Presentation is equally important which has an impact on the overall image of the setting.

SMELL – it is all about the smell of the product. This sense is closely linked to emotion and memory. You can use something like computer controlled scent machines to entice. Sensory technology can be very influential down an aisle. Case in point: a French bakery café can deliberately use ventilation to deliberately spread the smell of roasted coffee and baked items sold to induce clients to make or increase their purchases. A company which is known to furnish such state-of-the art equipment is Scent Air Technology.

By integrating the brand-building strategies to appeal to all, or most of the senses, sales have actually increased.

At the end of the day

Marketing done well can improve your brand’s awareness, lead to more sales, word-of-mouth, as well as gain client loyalty.

Using clever marketing approaches which do not cost a fortune, along with innovative and attractive packaging, can lead to impressive sales. However, to develop repeat purchases (think “sell-through” at the retail level), the product itself should taste good and produced with quality ingredients.

Stay in touch with your customers via social media interactions and occasional email newsletters and a blog. Do what you can to improve the lives of these people with valuable advice and special offers. The product should exude that it occupies a part in a pleasant lifestyle.

Remain true to what is making your CPG brand a success and refuse to become complacent. Keep refining, innovating, never mislead (through false benefit claims and nutritional information) and engage constantly with your loyal clients. These activities are not deemed a onetime event but rather an on-going process.

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Filed under 1, blue ocean strategy, brand positioning, Branding, branding not products, Business, competition, consumer packaged goods marketing, cpg branding, cpg marketing, cpg packaging, food marketing, Marketing, package design, positioning, public relations, publicity, pull marketing

Tagged as cpg branding, cpg marketing, creative food product marketing, food branding, food marketing

Category Archives: cpg branding

The Distinction Between CPG Brand Management and Luxury Brand Management

How to Blemish Your Brand and Lose Market Share Due to Short-foresightedness: The Trouble with Major Food Brands

Small Brands vs Big Brands in the CPG Space: How to Cleverly Outdo the Complacent Mammoth

Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) Marketing Tactics: Spending Less and Generating More Exposure & Revenues

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