Brand Premium: How Smart Brands Make More Money by Nigel Hollis

Author:Nigel Hollis
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781137510402
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2013-10-21T14:00:00+00:00

MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN AN UNDIFFERENTIATED CATEGORY

Innovation is the main mechanism by which brands can create differentiation in commoditized categories. By improving people’s product experience, brands improve the probability that they will attract new customers and retain existing ones, but product innovation alone is not the key to growth. Brands still need to find a way to communicate the news in a way that resonates with the target audience. Sometimes the difference is not really the innovation itself but just the way it allows you to tell a new story and align your brand experience with that story.

Roshfrans is a motor oil company founded in Mexico City over fifty years ago. In 2008, the brand was widely known and the fourth-largest lubricating oil brand in Mexico. Compared to its American and European competition, Roshfrans was more likely to be perceived as traditional and widely available, but it lacked any compelling functional or emotional benefit. In fact, research conducted by Millward Brown found there was little differentiation in the market in general. All the brands claimed to protect a car’s engine, but none of them had substantiated how their product did so.

Product development offered a means for Roshfrans to formulate a rationale for better protection and the opportunity to set itself apart from the competition. After a prolonged development process, Roshfrans created its Ti-22 engine oil. The oil contained titanium, represented in the name by its periodic table symbol, Ti, and its atomic number, 22 (Ti-22). The new ingredient offered significant benefits: it refilled damaged surfaces and created a protective layer on components subject to friction, resulting in less wear, lower gasoline consumption, and lower gas emissions. The question was how best to communicate these benefits?

In order to launch the new product, Roshfrans developed new packaging and advertising. The new packaging was a contoured bottle, colored silver to signal the new ingredient. In brand tracking research, the majority of respondents preferred the bottle’s look to that of the key competitors. In partnership with Grey Advertising, new TV spots were developed to support the launch with a new claim, “Friendly technology within everyone’s reach,” along with radio and billboard ads.

Two different creative approaches were used, supported by a 50 percent increase in the brand’s SOV over 2008, making Roshfrans the biggest advertiser in the category. The functional advertising showed the oil as a silver liquid that flowed from the new bottle and coated the engine in a silver sheen. The ad described the various benefits offered by the new product. This fairly typical dramatization of the product benefits was accompanied by a more radical approach: one that sought to position the car as an extension of its owner. The basic idea was that if your car is in good shape, then so are you. This message was conveyed through a series of humorous executions, including one in which the driver transformed into a superhero.

The launch was successful. By amplifying the benefits of the new ingredient, Roshfrans had created a new and differentiating reason to choose the brand.

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