The Importance of Rebranding Your Business
[ad_1]
The vagaries of public taste can be the curse of many small businesses but one company has shown that a little marketing savvy can go a long way and help turn an out-of-fashion product into a desirable consumer foodstuff. Forget the humble pilchard. In its place is now the Cornish sardine.
Now down in the west of England they know full well that the pilchard and the sardine are one and the same. However, to the average consumer the idea of a pilchard conjures up images of ring-pull tins and tomato sauce. The sardine on the other hand evokes memories of Spanish and Portuguese holidays and barbeques in the sun.
How the pilchard came to be transformed into the Cornish sardine and its consequent pride of place on supermarket fresh fish owes something to a bit of luck, allied to a slice of ingenuity. It also provides a classic example for SMEs everywhere of how marketing can make a huge difference to a company's fortunes. Although, in fairness, the success of the Newlyn-based Pilchard Works is exceptional by anyone's standards.
Big budgets can turn around products. Marketing gurus point to the success of Burberry in turning a staid tartan fabric into a must-have fashion accessory and television watchers everywhere will have been amused by the adverts for Skoda cars and how they have been transformed from cheap and nasty to rather desirable.
However, throwing large sums at rebranding exercises can often backfire. The launches of Consignia and the torch-carrying logo of BT collapsed up millions of pounds and were deemed failures.
The success of Pilchard Works offers a valuable example to other SMEs. I consider marketing to be delivering value to the customer. Often the public around rebranding does not help. The idea of the Cornish sardines is a lovely story, and it shows how a small company has identified a gap between what is delivered and what the customer wants.
The pilchard conjures up a negative image in people's minds, while the sardine is associated with sunshine, heat and happy times on holidays. Small business can take heart from this example. It is about being close to the customer and identifying what value can be delivered. And that can pretty much apply to anything.
A simple gap exercise to look at what a company is offering and what the customer wants, and how great or otherwise is the gulf between the two, is a valuable one for any SME and does not need to be linked to rebranding.
The Pilchard Works experience highlights some of the key rules SMEs need to adhere to when promoting their products. It also, of course, shows the massive impact a successful strategy can have on the sales of a small company. Too many smaller companies tend to be similar to other companies within their areas rather than standing out.
SMEs can sometimes have an advantage over larger companies with larger budgets. They can be more flexible and concentrate on one product and a niche customer market, while larger rivals may have a range of products and a varied customer base.
What the pilchard producer has done is understand a target group of customers and aim their product so that it appeals. And that is a valuable lesson whether selling sardines or whatever. They have used a rebranding exercise, but there are other ways of getting a message across, such as redesigning the packaging or using a particular distribution partner.
An example is a drink producer called Innocent Drinks. They produce an expensive, yoghurt-based smooth drink and have identified a niche, premium market. The drink is seen as healthy and organic and has appeared to the snack lunchtime market. A tie up with Starbucks that has got it onto the shelves of the coffee house has been a further boost.
Whether a yoghurt drink or a sardine, the rules are the same: you can change your image without access to a large PR campaign.
[ad_2]
Source by Alan Dowler