Strategy

Brand turnarounds

Jun 06 issue

History on your side
When it comes to turning customer loyalty to your advantage in tough times, brand tradition is a key weapon in your armoury. Recent research has shown that 65 per cent of consumers viewed ‘tradition’ as the number one factor in giving a brand ‘Britishness’, which is viewed as a positive attribute. Surprisingly, tradition was ranked above both ‘quality’ and ‘trustworthiness’.
As the recent case of Golden Wonder illustrates, historic brand loyalty can be an ace in your hand when the odds are stacked against you. The well-known British crisp brand has managed to lift itself out of trouble despite the administrators being called in at the start of 2006. The strength of Golden Wonder’s brand was so great that the announcement the company had gone under provoked a phenomenal public response.
‘My email inbox was drowned,’ says Ed Jackson, who took over as chief executive at Golden Wonder in early 2003. ‘There was a tremendous nostalgia for the brand, which was viewed as a little, traditional company trying to take on the bigger Walkers empire.’
The company’s trouble mainly stemmed from a fall in its own-label business, making snacks for the likes of Sainsbury’s, ASDA, Tesco and Morrison’s. At one point it had
more than 75 per cent of the entire UK own-label sector. By concentrating on producing snacks for others, Golden Wonder had neglected its own brand. So, when the company fell on hard times, it couldn’t turn to its own label for protection and security.
‘When I joined the business, the Golden Wonder brand was shot,’ says Jackson, ‘as very little money had been put into maintaining its value or into advertising for the previous ten years.’
One of the first things to do, he says, to turn the brand around was to rate the brand and analyse its value – vital to help you adopt the right strategy if you find your brand in trouble.
‘One of the problems we identified was that Golden Wonder didn’t look or taste like the powerful, punchy brand that it was claiming to be,’ continues Jackson. So, the company developed a new way of frying the potatoes, changed the oil and employed various methods of making them crunchier, in effect ‘changing the profile of the eat’ to fall in line with the brand reputation as a traditional, flavoursome, no-nonsense crisp. The packaging was changed, TV, radio and outdoor advertising campaigns were run in Scotland and Northern Ireland and Nik Naks even sponsored hit TV show The Osbournes. ‘If I could have done anything differently,’ says Jackson, ‘I’d have been even ballsier than we were.’ The campaign focused on the message of being ‘just a good honest crisp’.
‘In an environment where the brand leaders were having to be very politically correct, we didn’t have to be, as that’s not what people associated with our brand,’ adds Jackson. ‘We could have gone for the slogan “Full fat, full taste” – and maybe we should have.’

Don’t fight perception
Despite many companies salvaging their sales by overhauling their brand identity, sudden changes to a corporate or product image can sometimes be inappropriate. It’s very difficult to pull that off if your product or service has
a strong reputation (good or bad) already associated with it. Fighting against consumer perception is never going to be easy. That can lead to brand confusion and is unlikely to turn your fortunes around. Take the much publicised and disastrous re-brand of The Post Office Group to Consignia, which was eventually changed back after countless complaints.